Violet Mistress of Night
A poem about the nights you’re kept awake by the haunting voices in your head.
Violet mistress of night, you whip healing bruises
The silence you lash me with, numbs and confuses
Entranced by your hem of black peony bloom
A salt lake of hurt, lit by stumbling moon
Lost libraries of logic fog over, then flame
Ghost ancestors loom, invested in name
Contracting, expanding, cold bodies of water
I fall under the vortex of could, should and ought to
Hope is swallowed as kittens in rippling hoops
The crippling moments lucidity dupes
Dark dew of bud hour rinsed by tormented cry
I exit pain’s flower, wring my wondering dry
The devils stitch reasons from fleece of excuses
Angels reel for conscience - they know what the truth is
Saline queens sing to skin a most stinging lament
Of hours wasted on thought, as my dreams came and went
To me, the thoughts we have in the still of the night can be the most taunting of all.
I was imagining myself as a shadow version of Thumbelina, drawn to the complexity of a layered black peony and crawling within it, only to drown in a lake of my own depth as the dew merged with the salt of my tears.
Just for a night.
Cheery, I know….
I dread waking in the night because my brain switches itself on despite all my efforts and thoughts and concerns become amplified a thousand fold.