**This is part of an ongoing series of poetry by Cecilia Ruvinsky**
My tongue sticks to metal poles who sing wintry operas, and their silver dagger arias tear away the skin on my lips, until all that’s left are strips of speckled red. Vultures with icicle teeth circle in the frostbitten air, screeching in discordant melodies as they act as my attorneys, because as soon as the metal poles let me go – they’ll pluck out my eyes and leave this troubled body for dead.
They’ll spit out the taste of pungent spirit, as they realize I was a corpse all along, because if I never got to speak my mind, my insides were just rotting, turning alkaptonuria black. Every part of me is splintered, apocarpous, peeling away to reveal words I was forced to swallow, words with jagged edges and horrid sounds, words that pierce my organs in a treacherous attack,
so perhaps it’s best the vultures put me out of my misery. I won’t have to see my wrists torn apart by famine, my heart cracked into perfect imperfection like the Liberty Bell. The metal poles can sing my eulogy, and it’ll be the prettiest thing I’ve never fucking heard. A blizzard will ensue, and every snowflake will bring my naked body back to life, a new beginning, a new perspective, and this time I know I can get it right, because they’ll listen, they have to, to my every fig-laced word.