I was told once by someone I loved that during biblical times
Women like me were stoned to death
And I am still trying to figure out if it’s because I want too much from life
Or because I don’t want the right things,
Or maybe it’s simply the fact that I want.

And by want, I don’t mean ‘I want’, like I want ice cream for desert,
I mean ‘I want’, like lava wants to bleed through earth crust
Pushing forth from the core with an urgency that cannot be ignored.
Sliding savagely over surfaces, swallowing everything in my path.

Perhaps when I was young I lay for too long naked in the sun
Her heat seducing me completely
As she bled her dreams into me
Until they burned like flames beneath my skin
So now it feels like I’m always on fire
With a need so deep I sometimes find it hard to breath

But there was a time I allowed myself to ignore this need
In the name of those who would claim to love me
It was in that darkness I learned that the devil has angels
I met them as they haunted my dreamscapes
Leaving trails of smoke in my cloudless sky.

When I woke I found myself standing on the edge of infinity
Staring into the abyss that once was my future
Those devil’s angels had wrapped me so tightly in their web of warped morality
I had forgotten who I wanted to be
To busy trying to be what others expected me to be

I choked on the smoke of my dying fire
Stumbled and fell over sacrificed dreams and desires
Desperately trying to please these angel-devil needs
When I would look to them for approval they would smile and say:
“Give us more”
So I turned myself inside out, laid my body down
Sacrificing soul and flesh
I looked over to them once more but again all they said was:
“Give us more”
So I proceeded to peel skin from flesh, flesh from bone
Until I was drowning in my own blood and tears

It was then that I realized I can no longer abort my dreams
To provide sustenance for the dreamless.
That all these years I had been lost in someone else’s fun house
Locked away in a room full of twisted mirrors
Running madly from my own deformed reflection
Because I could no longer see me

I had forgotten the time when I was a girl child
How I dreamed fresh and sweet
And I wanted to be wonder woman
Simply because it must be divine to spin like that

So now I claim control of what is mine
I own my dreams and my fears
My triumphs and my failures
I will not bend my will to some else’s morality

I buried my guilt and revived my desire
Redefined my sexuality
Recreated the face of divinity to suit me
And I will make no apologies to dead men or sainted women

I rediscovered the poetry that had always nurtured me
Slowly I reconstructed myself
Using words to map my way back to the forgotten.
Metaphor molded flesh back onto bone
The mirrors cracked and fell away
And I could see my cloudless sky once more
I stared up into that void of possibility
Where death and destiny lay entwined
I shouted up to them:
“I am free now! Can you see me?”