Goblin Fruit

Goblin Fruit
February 3, 2010
5'' x 8''
Pencil on paper


i)
I loved you because you were sad,
damaged goods, lost and
(ir)retrieveable.
Am I really one of those ♀
who yearns to find and repair old broken souls?
Soothe, stitch it up,
wish,
wish,
wish it was up
to me to make everything right.
Me to make you right.

ii)
In some villages, in some
times, there was some-
one called a sin-eater, struck
dumb by the weight of
sorrow ingested
along with the meals she was offered
to consume the bulk of the departed
one's crimes.

Times
have changed, you say, but still
you pay
me with sweets, sullen meals,
grudging generosity,
to swallow,
and swallow,
and take in your misery.

iii)
I loved your poet's eyes,
musician's hands,
I loved your nineteenth-century soul, so full of
aching empty spaces.
I dreamed you an enchanted lover, tree spirit
of the ancient dark forest, your
bed a nest, your
room a cave.

iv)
Ah, child, but child,
you knew
you've heard the stories,
how those who enter the wood
in autumn, time of turning
too often lose their way
and stray
unknowingly down, under
root, under
ground,
and to once taste the goblin fruit
is to stay.

Ah, child, you slept in his nest, you
ate of his sickly sweets, you
ate of his sickly sins, you
stayed.