A Toast
I am sick of pouring love
while my cup stays empty, yours runs over
pieces of my souls discarded like ghosts
I become a part of your bones
invisible like a girl
malleable like clay
I’ve drank the wine and the kiss
I’ve lost it all because a girl
cannot be a princess
I love too much
I am a huntress not a queen
too fierce, too mean, a girl unseen
too large for glass, I break like shards
My soul explodes
I am too much to hold in
a bottle of enchantment
kept in the back and you pick it up
and call it love, I crack and fall for you
I am gold.
Ruination
I don’t really mind
I beg for death
I renounce my crown
my dress
Now you see I am a traitor
to my own body
I try to hide what I already know:
the body part you want is irremovable
I hide it in the ruins
a trick of my mind’s eye
it becomes dirt at men’s feet
that imprison me
A trail for my misery
stomping out what my mother
gave to me - my womanly soul
it sinks beneath the black boot
I am destroyed like a pillar of Alexandria
misused, wrath like dust,
I disintegrate divine
crumbling before your eye.
Esmalita Vangarden resides in Pennsylvania. Her work has been published in The Social Poet, Lantern Magazine, and Contraposition Magazine.
