Lead & Feathers

I carry the lead, you carry the feathers.
Chains wrap around my veins
like tethered vines, closer to my skin

than any shadow has ever treaded.

A sharp kiss of clanking metal, cutting,

relentless. Wounds split open, the
cracks seem endless. What remains

of the joy, the shivering hope?

Left with a smile that has to be reopened -

Distorted and broken,
A rip in the seams of my memory, of what is
and of what used to be. Buried in
the debris of what occured, yet
what occured was unheard, calm
and undisturbed, so it now rests
curled up inside a rotting
crevice of my mind.
I carry the lead, you carry the feathers,
Happily blind, eyes severed,
turned away from what I must swallow,
spared from the depths where I must wallow.
Possesing a hollow heart must
be liberating -
All taking, never  giving, leaving others
To gather the sizzling shards from your unforgiving,
dramatic, poisonous antics.

I carry the lead, you carry the feathers,
Chains wrap around my veins
like tethered vines.

The heavy face that I wear -
A taunting glare, an escaping tear as
 the metal vines slowly tighten
around my wrists 'til they whiten.
What an awful shade for a
woman like me.