Weight
I am exhausted carrying the lead weight
Of every crime I didn’t want to witness,
I am exhausted by the random lashes
Thrown at me from the stirring darkness,
As if light blinds one to the cosmic mass which
Devises fates on whims, sadistic notions.
The pain you’ve always held becomes too much,
The pain that no one sees until they’ve felt it,
It intensifies this noxious air we’re born in,
It keeps me turning in the quiet night till dawn
When obscured hours submit to
Weightless light,
Expanding
Spectrums flush the street
Safe once again, and
Stained glass, rising,
Paints us red and blue.
And I’m in love with a woman,
Who knows it.
But even in the bell-tolled morning,
An owl’s song rings in my ears—
If scars from long ago still find me there,
Strolling through lightless fog while others live,
Remember, that her wounds and mine are shared
By a single blow, thrown across centuries,
And the past pulls with chains, only just rusting.
And even now her sepia gaze isn’t sure
If her suffering had a purpose, and neither am I.
Liv Mullen is a lesbian writer from the Midwest. She works in short- and long-form fiction as well as poetry; she is currently writing her first novel.
