Arrhythmic Morality
perhaps I was the devil all along
a crumbling and shameless little fool
pleading to malicious cards of chance
among the dying and their reverence
that you should go, my benediction
stands, as you have ceased to love or
ever thrive, and I have mourned for
long enough to die, held captive in
your godforsaken eyes, a decade
failed to make you more familiar
naked, before a mirror
my cool-whip thighs monstrously
beg the fluorescent lights for mercy
the freckle hiding on my left hip
is a fleck of dirt in a white paint
bucket, it is all so incredibly blank
there is far too much truth in looking
across the desert of your clean skin
(it doesn’t rain here anymore)
and knowing that every piece of it
has been with you all this time, in
seeing your own breasts suspended,
trapeezeless and free, with the wire
marks still pressed cardinally into your
chest and the dented avenues of your
bare complexion martyring themselves
as my legs keep me standing, as they
prickle and buckle and sway, I become
a true transparency, unbridled and utterly
alone in this cubicle of time, alone in
knowing this hidden calligraphy of features
here, I evade the white-knuckled grasp of shame
About the poet:
Meredith Cottle is a full-time undergraduate student studying English and Creative Writing at Binghamton University with a part-time job at a daycare. Her passion for poetry has been largely influenced by the work of Charles Bukowski. She has been previously published in Live Poets Society of New Jersey’s American High School Poets 2016 anthology, titled “Inside My World,” and a high school newspaper.
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