What was it that I needed to feel in these veins of mine,
What was it that throbbed—
What pulse, what beat.

I lost my name and took your voice as recompense.
You were as others before you,
Oblivious. You were the cloud.

I fashioned you into clay so that I might direct
Your movements—I made you mine.
You were reborn as no one else before you,
You were the forbidden.
I turned you into a religion and your silence
Became my sacrament.

I think I am beginning to believe in you.

I was the fruit that hung from your limbs, heavy as sleep.
I disturbed your dreams and shook your consciousness—
You cannot escape me, I won’t let you.

I fill your days, one after the next, like the sky fills the earth.
I pour from you like blood from a wound.
Your passiveness does not satisfy me—
Yet you stand there so cool,
Calm as the breeze that stirs the clouds.

I long to open a window and cry out with this voice
I stole from you, but it serves me none;
It just fills my throat with feathers and smoke.