Taylor Bond
 

Our Father

            Father, you said, 

I have watched the sun wash the windows while I waited for you. I pried the claws off of lobsters, the crackled red shellac sounded like bullets, and I did not move. There is such a fine line between fear and pride. The light from the kitchen, a caution tape on linoleum tile. I tossed the remains to the trash and treasured the meat, the tender pulp, like cloth between my fingers. How long have I waited?

In your absence I have become a predator, 
            foul mouthed female. My mouth spews, 
                        aseptic syllables, heavy noise on sodden tongue,
 teeth licking flesh;                    like glue against fire, I stick to what I know is dangerous. 

Here, a blade. There, a hand. 
Someone reaches out for me and
            I wish to lick their wounds until they know 
the taste of poison, until they love it 
            more than cotton sheets and pencil shavings,
 more than the warm prisons of their own lungs. 
                        Sweet possessions. A symphony. 

            father, I have waited for you. 

I have pressed my ear, soft and hirsute, to dirt to listen to the thunder of your footsteps from a distance. I have become a carbon creature, a testament to life like all of the others. I have excommunicated the bees because they know nothing of loneliness. My scabs have blossomed into roses on my knees so that I am pretty while I kneel.
                    
Is this what I have become?
            Maybe love is denying yourself             everything you think you deserve. 
Do you need the vitality of your own heart, selfish beast? 
            There is no stability in happiness; balance done in 
by scalpels against stems, cutting the seeds from the core, 
            spilling everywhere; fierce progeny,
            do not cut yourself into children, 
                        or let loose your dreams like spores. Your hopes cannot infect other. 

            father, you do not support these illegitimate dreams. Cast off your prosthetic love. 
Make a minister of me.
 

Taylor Bond is a 2014-2015 Lannan Fellow, a copywriter at Tokyo Journal, and a freelance photographer. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Belle Reve Literary Journal, The Foundling Review, and Underwater New York, among others. contact