There is something in my throat.

It isn’t a word—

It has no sharp edges,

No cutting corners

And the words never come first, anyway.

It could be a sound-

It feels loud, curved,

Salt slicked and voluptuous—

Guttural.

 

It’s rattling in the back

Metallic and repetitive

raking against the tongue to get it to talk.

Who is chained back there? How many?

Begging for company or begging for change?

Not me, for I am here-

 

Although, now that I think about it

Today I am halved,

A penumbra of someone else

With a fuller hip and a squarer gaze.

It’s warm in the yard

And the angel next to me just inhaled—

I pant

But my throat catches me again.

 

Collared, I chase until my tether chokes me tight

And I am yanked by the hands of other sufferers

Into this dream world of rights and wrongs

There is a liminality here

That only two shadows may turn to a right

Against the ever-fading, ever-moral light.

 

My limbs judder in the dirt

Aching for me to stop writing with my fingertips

And to find creativity with my hips.

They beg to find the blood clot

The ink blot—

A stint or a stammer that made my heart and my soul and my words stop,

But deep down they know that this is no glitch or hurdle.

There is no typo in the way my thighs burn.

 

Artemis and Apollo are sat either side.

They sit and play god with my chains.

They have none of their own— there is no restraining

What brings the day

And what tugs the sea.

 

They mesh and blend into something else

Some other idea

In some other town

Where there are no whispers of parents or friends

Or sacrilege

 

I kiss them both

And sound comes out.