Which, pray tell,
of my secrets will you
begin with?

You, so sure you
know even the tenth
of them

so sure the Pharaoh's
mysteries lie firmly
within your grasp.

Petulant child.

Would that I
could feel aught for you
save revulsion.

Shall you tell
that I called you Daddy
in the dark of night
while you fucked me?

Begging, pleading -
harder, harder, faster
harder

please Daddy, please.

You who have always
had a father and
assume wrongly that
there is some

secret at play,
when a fatherless
child cries out

in the night.

Or perhaps my nightmares
are the secret?
The ways I cannot bear
sometimes

to be touched
not even the
barest fevered whisper

of flesh against mine?

The ways I go quiet
and still, cold
when contradicted?

You, so sure I
was an open book
saw less than the
stranger, on the street

would infer from
the steady determined
gait, the angle of
the head in a reply

the eyes that burn through
scorch the soul
who dares look back.

What could you show
that I have not bared myself?
What third breast?

What unchain-ed beast
within that others never
heard howling
primally

into the night?

You think to hurt
me, wound, incapcitate
succeed where others, far
more

capable and practiced than you
have already failed.

Alas. Where once lived
fondness lies only ash,
ash only.

I give you this length
of sturdy untried new
rope.

Do with it what you will.

I have stared at my
fears, faced them down
I cringe before no man
I am the water

and the earth,
immutable,
insatiable...

and in the end,
unknowable.

At least for you.

02/03/2009

Posted on 02/03/2009
Copyright © 2025 Gira Bryant