bioluminescence

my eyes these months
have been an unseasonable desert
cried out, cried out
into blooms
voluptuous
waves of bioluminescence

“dive right in,” they say,
“you’re still young
you should know better
you’re too old
you’re going to die anyway
why not die in the light?”

and i am, i am
i am mourning this death of me
a self-hurled sphinx
coloured and riddled
neither one nor other
winged, anchored
not young
still bleeding
not mother

I grieve these things
as woman
the current death
in a long line of femicide

but it’s how I let him kill me
that rankles
that rises tides
drowns whole deserts
border swaggering
into territory clearly marked
“trespassers will be shot”
he comes here
to woo
to sift my grains
compare them
to the ones he brought in on his feet
tongue forked tutting,
“you did not try
you did not try
like you tried with that one and that one and that one”

oh my fibres behind my eyes
my nerves and tendons arcing
the lightning neurons turning sand to glass
my liver and spleen
even my womb
wants to tear the throat out of him
throw him to the eels

but the child, I think
the child he was
is

and instead of erecting the barbed wire
higher round my shoulders
in a spray of phosphorescence
I turn the gun on myself
the trespasser in her own land