Alexandria

She casts long shadows over me as I rest

To love her is torture

Alive and desperate, she builds castles from thread 

White towers, cocoons, endless stairs that lead to nowhere

My creator, she bears me everything 

On this planet only we inhabit 

She hums as she dances so beautifully 

She spins spiderwebs in her sleep 

If she weren’t mine

I would let them swallow her whole

The delirium of power makes her fragile and angry

One wrong twist in her plié and the facade will crack

She vomits nonsense like a pearly bile

Gnarled white scars calcify over her slender torso

She chokes on the failure and shudders to a stop

I lose myself in the richness of panic and tear her mistakes away howling 

Clawing through tissue to rescue her steel heart 

Time again I swear to myself: I will not save her

She is too temperamental, too stupid, too clumsy to love

But the dust will settle and she reaches out to me

Skyscrapers resting in her palm like a crown of daisies 

Her illustrious face 

Is a lamp against the midnight fog

Maybe this is love 

A knife to my lungs

Indescribable torture that only she can inflict 

Alexandria, oh Alexandria 

I drag myself like a boat beating against the current

I will never stop coming back to you

Ella Song