What are you willing to do?

I am a kaleidoscope of colors, my love, an endless abyss of beauty that is overlooked by chips on my shoulder and open scars on my back. I am a body full of bleeding roses, thorns sharp for those who dare enter stoned gates and commit to the tide. And once my heart beats kind, tender blood to my veins, takes over the flesh and bones of my being, I must remind myself that I am a shelter of storms, released when touched and pried. I try to seek light through thunder and hail, but fail in the chaos, taking their hearts down with me, with quite remorse.

What are you willing to do?

I am the stars in the night sky and the sun in the blue, beautiful and glorious in the darkness and light. I pulse rhythms and beats to the music in my soul, sing with the blue birds that carry blankets in the rain. I am ill and willing, ill and able to take on the war, murder bee hornets and black spiders with the whip behind my back. Don’t look at me and only see what’s posted by the demon. Don’t sniff out my decay, and use paws to scrape the skin off of the only body I consume, the only body God designed and created for my soul. I am ill within the beauty, you see, I am ill within the grace.

What are you willing to do?

I am a woman with body and strength, with strong bones and black skin, with sharp nails and white teeth, piercing eyes and full lips. I am a woman who survived the calling of a man to have me kneel at his feet, to kiss shoes and lick soles as he presses his heel on my head. I am a woman who dug up graves and confronted the dead with the shovel in my hand, chopping off heads before they gripped my throat and threw me into trenches. I am a woman with some fire and steam, and I can see how many bodies I will burn, how much blood I will spill once I completely become it.

What are you willing to do?

I am more than the maggots that eat and scarf down fresh flesh in the basement. I am more than a storm in the ocean that wrecks ships with my surge. You may question my sanity and the darkness hidden below the well, but I am every flower that blooms in the spring, every stream flowing in the meadow. I flourish in my sun and revel in it, and only those who dare seek it…see it.

What are you willing to do?

I love you, my love. I hope you know I do.

But tell me, what you’re willing to do.

To love me.