Ink spills like water over
a canvas of skin-
snaking it's way through cracks
bleeding slowly and meticulously,
tribituaries of permanent venom
to dissaude her from thinking she is better
than the men whose shadows she basks in.

The mirror,
a splash of realism across a mural of selves,
flattens her out like the lies she procures from the
bowels of her throat,
the mistruths she believes from the depths of her body,
persuading, producing.

Hands shaking, a hurricane over nerves,
calm before the storm, takes slow
and holds. A hazing of disbelief, while she etches the word
poison across her thigh, in thick black ink (from the midnight sky)
to remind her that her mind is merely inundated with the pleasures she's stolen
and the significance she's smothered between her legs.