By Emma Smith (IG: @emzmariepoems)
Previous: "This is how I imagine death"
A single tear,
close up of my face
in which I admit that I miss my father
so that a man might kill for me
might wear my father’s coffin clothes
arrange the bed with all his bones
and lead my hand around the room.
Once, I lay curled
in the anxious cocoon of my mother
half-cooked, metamorphosing.
My father
in a deep red cinema seat
prised the fingers from her eyes.
He was out for blood
I would morph into
Clarice,
armed to my gleaming teeth
and when you bite
into the cold white apple of my cheek
I shrug on her skin like autumn chic
and raise the dead men
from their sleep.
close up of my face
in which I admit that I miss my father
so that a man might kill for me
might wear my father’s coffin clothes
arrange the bed with all his bones
and lead my hand around the room.
Once, I lay curled
in the anxious cocoon of my mother
half-cooked, metamorphosing.
My father
in a deep red cinema seat
prised the fingers from her eyes.
He was out for blood
I would morph into
Clarice,
armed to my gleaming teeth
and when you bite
into the cold white apple of my cheek
I shrug on her skin like autumn chic
and raise the dead men
from their sleep.
Next: "Sirens"