King of Iron Hearts

by Giana Darling

  Like scars and puncture points

  In your cold soul

  Stopping you from ever

  Moving on

  Again

  Fill the cracks and puncture wounds in your heart

  Inflicted by the callous acts of others

  With the mortar of self-love

  Kintsugi

  He ripped her world apart with his bare hands

  Sucked out the poison and spit out the bones

  Until all that was left was

  Possibility and choice

  He handed back to her with his lips

  In a kiss.

  Definition:

  When the cards are played face up and visible to all the players.

  Someone once asked me,

  “Why poetry?”

  And I said,

  “Why does the sea kiss the shore over and over like an eager lover

  With a salty tongue?

  Why does the moon reflect the sun turning golden rays into

  Silver fragments?

  And why does the bee visit the spring flowers

  A buffet of pastel blooms?

  Because it is only natural

  Because they are born with a purpose written in their code

  Just as mine is penned in prose.”

  Poetry gives words to feelings with no end

  A road map for the vast plains of the heart

  A lighthouse for those lost in its inky depths

  And an oasis for those wandering its desserts parched with thirst.

  I hide you in my poetry

  As unsubtle as a gun beneath a blanket.

  I want you to feel your spirit in the words

  Know that as I craft this prose

  It is you seeped in the ink

  You I feel moving my hand across the page

  And you in the beat of my heart as it times

  Each legato phrase.

  I don’t want to text.

  I want to press my fingers to the page and

  Smudge my print in the ink

  On the paper

  As I write you a love letter.

  My soul scrawled in script for you to decipher.

  The first time I read a book

  I found I had hooks in my heart

  Where the words could hang

  And ornament my soul.

  I am a hoarder of language. A gorger of verbosity.

  “Look at her,” I whisper.

  “Look at the way she breaths like a tsunami pulling a tidal range of energy in through her parted lips.”

  “Look at the way she moves like her muscles are tied to the rhythm of a song only she can discern.”

  “Look at the way she reads a book with her finger resting on the page like a cartographer mapping new lands.”

  “Look at her,” I whisper. “Is it any wonder I stare?”

  I was an old book

  None one picked up at the library

  To spread their fingers over my pages and

  Absorb my words

  I was almost forgotten

  A dead language like Latin

  Until the girl with the glasses

  Who dreamt of days long past

  Pulled me out of the dust

  Cracked open my spine

  And exposed my pages to her light

  I read novels

  To live life

  While I waited for more

  I struck my hands between the books

  On the shelf at the library

  And waited

  For someone

  To take it in theirs

  To make with me

  A life more beautiful

  Than the strangest fiction

  Fit to me

  Made for me

  Bone of my bone

  Broken

  Lost or freed

  You are a state of mine

  Eternal

  Bone

  Of my

  Bone

  That first kiss was a promise

  Sealed in the petal pink wax of your lips

  That my mouth

  Would be yours until

  Our very last kiss

  Dreams shine like pearls in her eyes.

  I become an artist, a collector; stringing salt water gems on necklaces

  That she may wear around her throat.

  A secret in her smile

  Tucked in a rosy furl

  I want to pull it out with my teeth

  Soothe the paper cut with my tongue

  Dip in the well of her blood and write

  My own secret on her lips

  So that every time she speaks

  Every lick of those lips

  And drag of breath through her mouth

  She feels me

  Her tongue scraps the scar of my secret on

  The inside of her pout

  And she can’t deny the truth of it

  Of me

  Of us

  I’ve branded her with it

  She’s mine

  I pressed a kiss to the center of a rose

  It twisted

  Unfurled

  Dew in its folds

  Sweet on my lips

  Cool against my tongue

  I suck at the fragile bloom

  And feel like

  God

  As it blossoms under my touch

  Her amber eyes trapped every tragedy of her past in the dark flecks and inconsistent whorls of brighter gold. I knew if I took my time, I could read her story in them as eloquently as hearing it from her lips.

  She was too much heaven

  And I everything hell

  We met clandestinely

  At the kiss of dawn

  And the death of day

  It was forbidden to connect

  Because together we would have made

  A heaven of hell

  And a hell of heaven

  And where is the sense in that?

  There are no rules in love.

  She was gorgeous

  Like the edge of a sharp blade in the light

  Striking as a flint against rock

  As deadly to my heart

  As an arrow tipped in poison punctured through

  My chest

  I woke up to the sight of you

  Dawn sluiced across your skin like gold

  And for the first time

  In a long time

  The dream of you was not a nightmare

  Because my reality matched the fantasy

  I found love when I was eight

  Pressed petals the colour of blood

  Hidden between the pages

  Of a book I was too young to read

  Again,

  At that awkward time

  When my voice lacked depth

  Then suddenly

  Fell to the bottom of a well

  That signaled maturity and I thought

  “Finally, I am old enough to love.”

  But by fifteen, I had seen only wraiths,

  Lust like brass when I would have gold

  Infatuation thin as gauze and just as easily torn

  At eighteen,

  My half-formed soul felt fallow

  My dreams withered to husks and tumble weeds

  I was old enough for first love, they said

  But my heart yearned for that and more

  They couldn’t have known what would happen

  That same year

  When I saw you across a parking lot

  How my heart would age a decade with each beat

  And the hollow cage of my chest would be at once so filled

  In a second, I was found.

  Too young, too old, too every single thing at once

  Because with you I was made and unmade

  Everything was possible because of you

  Yet nothing was necessary

  Because my ten-year journey

  For the other half of my soul

  Was done.


  And that was all I ever wanted.

  Your voice is between the lines, my queen

  Echoed in the white before the black

  It is the swell of words that rest

  Behind the apex of my throat

  Your scent is caught between my teeth

  Sinks among the grooves there and gives them taste

  Of clouds

  Dew upon my palate

  I hide you under my tongue

  Your body walks my lines at night

  It warms the skin beneath my arms

  Settles against my chest

  A thumb in the hollow of my collarbone

  It whispers your breath into mine

  Your heart rests in the gaps

  Between my ribs

  It sits and breathes my breath

  It webs the links between my toes

  And when I swim, my queen, it is on you I float

  She was sun-warmed

  The skin behind her ear like ripe summer fruit

  A peach split open on wet grass

  I wondered

  If I pressed my lips to the crease between her thighs

  Would she still smell of sweet stone fruit?

  I would fall from grace

  Again and again

  If it meant living in sin

  With you

  The woman I love has eyes like the forest floor

  Dappled in golden daylight, dark with evergreens and light with spring frost.

  I get lost in the treed twilight of that gaze

  And don’t care to ever be found.

  They say

  You are too bold

  Your smile so wide it could swallow

  The world

  They say

  You are too strong

  When atlas is the man who holds up

  The world

  And you are only a girl

  They say

  You should mind your place

  In the kitchen or the bedroom

  Outside the home beside your man

  You are his accessory

  They say

  These things

  Because

  If they let you shine

  You would blind them all with your light

  I say

  I would live the rest of my life without sight

  If it meant feeling the warmth of your glow

  Every day until I die

  Her laugh reminded me

  Of the pop

  When the cork escapes champagne

  And effervescence spills over my hands

  Bubbling with joy

  I want to drink her laugh down every day

  When the world comes for you

  When it tears at you with vicious teeth and cracks open your bones to eat out the marrow

  Mercilessly aimed at your destruction

  I got you

  When the villains come as they do

  In every shape and size

  Masquerading as friends or announcing themselves as foe

  I got you

  When there is danger

  A sword swinging at your head or a lance aimed at your heart

  A bullet ready to pierce your armour and obliterate your priceless life

  I got you

  Bent and folded

  Like origami

  Into the shape of my desires

  I craft you as art and paint you in the red colours of my lust.

  You want it harder

  Darker

  So long it hurts

  You want it with a sinner

  A bad boy

  A man without a plan

  You want it the way they tell you not to

  The way the villain likes it

  The way the harlot has it

  I want it darker too

  Harder

  So long it hurts

  Sometimes love

  Isn’t sugar and sweetness

  And everything fine

  Sometimes love

  Is rough bites and deep moans

  And making you mine

  I want to love you hard

  Fill all your holes with my fingers

  Stop you up at every puncture point

  Give you my every breath to breathe

  So that you are full up with your love of me

  And you will never yearn for anything else again

  Pinned to the mattress like a butterfly by the wings

  I run my fingers

  Down

  Her soft, vibrant body

  Dig them

  Into the tender places

  That make her keen into my mouth

  I eat her moans

  Like a glutton

  And fill her with my love in return

  You wouldn’t think

  Such a little miss

  Could yell so loud at night

  With her ankles bound

  And her hands chained

  To the headboard

  Banging against the wall

  You wouldn’t think

  Such a little miss

  Would make a big guy like me bend

  But while she may be the one tied up

  I am the one she has wrapped up tight

  Around the crook of her little finger

  I loved her darkly,

  And I didn’t care if that damned me to Hell

  So long as I could rule there with her.

  And looking at her in that moment

  ––The setting sun gilding her face like a Klimt painting as she smiled demurely out the window, blood on her delicate fingers, my gold at her long throat––

  I finally understood what love was.

  I look at you

  And suddenly

  I believe in magic

  And mythological beings with wings

  Who reign over heaven

  And only fall to earth

  When they find a man

  Worthy

  Of their divine kiss

  What if ancient things are true

  What if we were once born

  With four arms

  Four legs

  Four eyes

  And two hearts

  But the Gods feared the power of that force

  Of one complete soul

  And broke us with a lightning strike

  In half

  Now when we are born

  We wander and are lost

  Until we find the person

  We were split from

  At birth

  And become once more

  Whole.

  “I love you.”

  Isn’t it incredible

  That one phrase can be

  A truth, a lie, and a weapon?

  I fall

  I fall

  I fall

  And it is your choice where I land.

  She loves me. She loves me not.

  I never liked to dance until we started to tip toe

  Around each other

  Waltzing through the halls in time with one another

  We tapped out a repartee that said

  We didn’t care

  But the spin of our hard shoes against the ground

  Entangled like ballerinas in a Russian music box

  Forever spinning as one

  Said differently

  The language of desire

  Is the tracks of red worn down the back

  All roads leading to sin

  It’s the colour of her sex

  As it blushes blossom pink

  And unfurls like the blooms in spring

  It’s the slope of the valley between her breasts

  Brushed in dew like dawn over the hills

  And the sigh from her lips

  Breaking against mine

  Like the waves against the rocks

  The language of desire

  Is written here

  Between two bodies in the dark

  But I find it often as I walk the earth

  Betwe
en the flowers and the glades

  And I’m reminded again

  As I often am

  That desire is a natural thing

  She is written in a language I don’t understand

  Something dead and ancient

  With hard consonants where there should be

  Soft vowels

  I want to spend the rest of my life

  Learning to be fluent

  Love is bilingual.

  I had a taste for her

  The wet between her thighs like salted pasta water

  The skin behind her knees smooth as a plum beneath my teeth

  If I pierce it with my teeth I could break her open

  And drink her right up

  I was an epicure at a feast of delicacies

  She is like the sea

  Just because she chooses to kiss you

  Again and again

  Sweetly lapping at the shore of your boundaries

  Do not forget

  Like the sea

  She could swallow you whole

  She tastes like fresh brine

  Like sea water

  I’ll ride her in softly

  Rocking

  Like an incoming tide

  And even when she ebbs after the crest

  I know she’ll flow back to me again

  The sea always returns to kiss the shore