"Bound" by Amy Wright

Bound

Amy Wright

The chains cut into my soft flesh.

I am manacled by doubt, weighed down by grief,

a paroxysm of pain.

I allowed myself to be bound,

I smiled as I was restrained

Unlike Houdini, I can't pick the lock.

I’m trapped, caged like a lion in a circus,

where Houdini got his start.

Maybe that’s where I belong,

among the other freaks and clowns.

I can’t say what brought me here,

But I’m caught, locked in,

unmoored in time and utterly alone.

No one could break me out or release me,

let alone myself.

I’ve been here so long the bars are old friends.

I’ve stopped pressing my face against the iron,

watching for the jailor who wears my face,

the worden whose manner is my own.

Houdini could escape from any prison, but I cannot.

If there was a jail break, would I try to escape?

My cell is warm and I know the routines.

My cell is my body, a solipsism that nonetheless contains multitudes.

My cell is my mind, an endless scream.

Click click click click goes the roller coaster heading up a hill.

Snap crack goes my gum between my molars

My head is done,

caved in like a melon.

Split like a too-ripe peach,

a crack that lets bacteria in.

New life colonizes like humans,

destroying the peach, destroying their home

They will consume it until there is no more to consume and then

they and the peach will die

in a conflagrating orgy of decay.

Let me in, let me let me let me love you.

Let me feed you ice cream from a monogrammed teaspoon.

Let me rub your feet, my strong fingers between your toes,

My thumbs caressing your instep.

Let me let me let me love you,

I dare not speak my desires.

Let me curl your thin hair into ringlets

like those on a porcelain doll.

Let me tattoo your papery skin with love

Let me worship your gray eyes and your supple mouth

With its crumbling, still sharp teeth.

Let me let me love you.

Let me watch you in the water,

your form buoyant from the salt.

Let me lick you dry and robe you in velour,

your body soft and pliant.

Let me love you.

Somewhere in darkness you sleep.

A crust forming in the corners of your eyes,

your body blank and still,

your mind whirring softly,

Feeding you fantasies and lies.

It’s too much to expect that you will wake

with dreams intact, with dreams

flowing like a river from subconscious to

the dam of your conscious mind,

where dreams are caught like so much flotsam in the water,

where you turn your dream solid like a flat stone,

marveling at the whorls of bright pink that band it.

If you put this stone in your pocket and rub it continuously with your thumb,

the stone will wear smooth.

Like your dream, it is secret and it is safe.

A comfort in the rushing waves of life.

You have many stones, many dreams.

Unrealized potential, unlimited plans.

So many stones that your pockets overflow.

You could walk into the darkly swirling water

Weighed down

And be no more.

You come to me with a cut in the meat of your thumb.

Blood drips from the wound and there are stars in your eyes.

The better to see me with.

I bind you up as well as I can,

but the cut will not heal.

Though it is small and insignificant,

The blood pours from it slowly, slowly,

Like a leaky faucet. It’s you who

Pressed the tip of the knife into your flesh,

You tried to feel something, anything, even pain

Is better than the vast gray nothingness that binds you,

a life that mocks you with its great swaths of sorrow.