National Poetry Month : Emma Rhodes,

 

 

There’s a figure who moves about my home and body

I light incense monthly and wander,
speak to myself and say please
leave. I need a safe space away,
my own. I hope

you understand.

The figure remains.

Throws glass plates
at my stomach.

I’m always lurched
over clutching,
what remains of my
insides, not sliced and

bleeding, it pretends to lay dead
from the ceiling over my bed.
When I sleep the figure enters
me from behind.

Rapes me in my bed,
in my dreams,
in the chair, and when I wake

friends say that sounds scary.  

I am here alone again.
Apartment smells of lavender.

Light incense nightly, write
poems take more
hot showers, cleanse
my body, my space

from this figure, this
me, watching,
reminding: it understands,
but will not leave
until I let it.

 

 

 

 

Emma Rhodes (she/her) is an emerging queer writer currently living on the unceded territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island people. Her work has been published in places such as Prism International, Plenitude, Riddle Fence, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, Razor Burn, is available through Anstruther Press.

Photo credit: Connor Price-Kelleher