Late Bloomer

The delphiniums have just come into bloom.

Late this year, they have hung back, tightly woven in their purple hoods, perhaps waiting for the sun to return.

I cheer them on, with their poisonous dolphin backs, opening fearlessly in the weed infested flower bed that I had neither the time or disposition to attend to.

I love that they do not give a shit about how ragged the garden looks, they burst out of the rain-soaked mud strutting and purring.

Some days I feel like we might be cousins, friendly on the outside, rank and venomous if someone gets too friendly.

How do I make it clear to folks that under my skin a world which sometimes likes to acidly eat itself exists?

There are times when my calcified bones grate into one another, skeleton music, ugly to listen to, bleating aged, punk rock grunge.  There is no room for sleep down this caterwauling rabbit hole. It feels terrifying to invite a loved one into such an endless black tunnel.

On the outside I may appear harmless, yet, just like the purple garden queen, I do not smell particularly sweet, and if you take me into your arms my body may push and heave, electric jolting of scar tissue from all the years of grunt work. I will not unfold like a tranquil feline under your fingers, no I will eat your skin. Don’t you get it? I am dog-hungry for the scent of sweat and the buckling of flanks that simply want to fuck so deep they cease to exist.

Having this crip bone rack brings out a memory hunger of a time that I howled a cum out of me that broke the lightbulb, a time where I did not use a cane, or look at wheelchairs and begin to tremble.  

Bone spurs have wizened my shaggy cunt heat lamp, but I am willing to be a ramshackle garden patch, to spread my thighs to that heavy sting of wanting. I may not be to the liking of everyone, perhaps even venomous to some who are weak hearted when it comes to suffering or fucking for that matter. But if you have been lacerated by the mutilations of a human life and managed to crawl out in the daylight and be resurrected just know that I am skilled at kissing a razor wound and I am not afraid of the dark and what secrets it can bring.

Lana Maree, hag, crip, baba, writer. author of Falling Towards Grace and Ghost Woman