Golem

"Sometimes I wonder if other people's love makes me"

This self loathing peels back my skin of clay

Wave after wave

My feelings erode

Washed away by apathy

Or doubt

Or fear

Until I'm just a dream life had

Or maybe a nightmare my brain thought up

I wouldn't call myself art

More like an unformed lump of clay

Somebody could make me beautiful

Carve my hips with their fingers

Sculpt my lips out of the formless strips of love beside you

Paint my eyes and build me out of pieces of you

Until I'm a golem stitched together by tender love

Stitched through and through by fingers that made sure to love me

Maybe then I would be beautiful

If someone stayed awake in the late hours of the night

To find something in this odd void of pain and trauma

Something soft in my eyes

Something tender about the curve of my hip

Something worth saying on my tongue's tip

A dream dripping gentle from my eye

I'd be your golem

I'd be the work of art you brought to life

Unless of course

I was not meant to be alive

Or conscious of the life I'm living

Sculpt me out of love, please

Undo what my mother made of me

Squash and stretch this hollow piece of clay

Take out all the hate

Throw out all the memories

Make me your own

Give me a different name

Maybe then I won't belong to my mother

Maybe then

Reviews

[William Michael Reeves]

I like your analogy of self as moldable clay and the mythical horror as art. We have no control of our childhood, yet it molds us. Creates us. Becomes us.

[Lillian Kirsch]

Thank you! This poem really, really resonates with me and it's probably one of my favorites I've written