the lady in my oven loves the lady in my walls

Life crawled out of

my oven this morning and

slammed the door behind her.

"It's all a scam," she said,

she breathed, (breath! oh how lungs

could so greedily inhale oxygen but

carbon monoxide could make her choke-)

"It's all a sham, this Death business. 

He doesn't want to bargain. He only deals in riddles."

suddenly quite sullen, i turned the gas off.

maybe Death was a liar and a cheat, but

Pain always kept her promises;

i was peeling away at yellow wallpaper to find

the woman i trapped inside

years ago, who is wretched and wails

because she knows Pain; they made a deal.

i shut her up in the walls

& had them painted over. (why did i do it to her-

why did i let her stare at nothing until suddenly

there were nooses in the patterns and

ladies creeping in the garden by moonlight?

i am not even a Husband.)

Death offered me a poisoned apple,

but not before he showed me the poisoned comb,

and before that he so kindly offered to lace up my stays.

i take a bite, and my teeth are sharp.

i taste copper on my tongue as Death screams out in agony.

i traded my life for hers, shook and pulled until

the bars of her cell broke and

all the ladies who ever crept by moonlight,

daylight, twilight,

came out with smiling maws

and yellowed fingertips. 

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

death comes hard, pain comes easy...fickle moonlight beckons...death is Eve...and that poison apple won't kill, it will just maim the conscience...and the pain of giving in will last longer than that tree of knowledge ever could.
j.

[John the Baptist]

I have a feeling this was written by an angry, bitter, depressed woman. This not a criticism.