The Lioness Awakens

by Lauren Eden

  easier to tear a bird from

  the sky with my bare hands.

  Maybe it was angels. Maybe

  it was simply my survival

  instinct kicking in,

  knowing that I couldn’t stay

  to die with you. I was not

  made to stay in that kind of

  darkness. If I were, I

  would’ve died before my

  twelfth birthday. All I knew

  was that I was too old and

  too strong to let a man take

  me down now.

  PEACE

  Once I felt peace

  surging through

  my fingertips, I knew

  there would never

  be a pair of hands

  that could tempt me

  back into chaos.

  PORTAL

  Sometimes

  when I squint

  really hard

  I can see myself

  in every one

  I try to love.

  SURVIVAL

  I shot myself

  in the heart

  with Cupid’s arrow

  and they called it

  a suicide attempt.

  They don’t know

  a life survival skill

  when they see one.

  HOPE

  That sliver of light

  beneath the door—

  that one strip of hope

  my eyes cling to

  in the darkness.

  I find it. I always do.

  SIMPLE

  Life is simple.

  Say it.

  Then listen

  to all those voices,

  not your own

  interrupting,

  trying to complicate it

  for you.

  YIN AND YANG

  I counted on one hand

  those who had loved me most

  then counted on the other

  those who had hurt me the deepest

  and when I clasped them

  both together

  I could see that peace

  had come to me at last.

  SOFTNESS

  Succumb to me.

  Leave your battles

  with the boys and

  let me wrap you up

  in the white flag

  of my sheets

  surrendering you

  to a softness

  we don’t have to

  tell anyone about—

  your rough hands

  never looked

  so gentle

  under candlelight.

  FRICTION

  I’ve lost too much.

  I don’t have anything left to burn.

  Everything I have now

  I fought the wildfires for

  and I recognize that friction

  in our skin when it touches

  that blaze in your eyes

  stirring up my ashes.

  You are the kind of risk

  I just won’t take anymore.

  AWAKENING

  Waking

  can feel like

  an inconvenience

  when you’d planned

  on sleepwalking

  through the rest

  of your life.

  RETURNING

  I am returning

  slowly

  to the hollow

  of my oak

  finding my way back

  through the dark forest of men

  their torsos carved with my initials

  men

  who offered me shelter

  from all the storms

  that weren’t my own.

  But it is time, now.

  It is time to come home.

  RITUAL

  Women might

  ebb and flow

  like moon tides

  but we want a man

  to love us like the sun

  arriving on time

  and always,

  always

  with breakfast.

  STRIP

  You ask me why

  I like to undress myself

  in front of you

  and I tell you

  it is my only power play

  in a world

  that is always trying

  to undress me

  first.

  PARADISE

  The easy lives

  get harder

  while the hard lives

  get easier

  and I can tell you

  this ninth life

  is a dream.

  PRIDE

  MINE

  I was given

  the most valuable

  brutal lesson

  of them all

  and it was this:

  I had to leave

  the love of my life

  to save myself.

  I left the love of my life for me.

  And in making

  that choice

  I became

  the love of my life.

  HIGHER PURPOSE

  I caught the one I was made for

  red-handed in the garden

  dirt on his hands

  trying to bury my rib

  back into the earth

  muttering to God,

  She is not what I wanted—

  and that was when I knew

  that perhaps I was made

  for something different

  in this life.

  Maybe something more.

  CONSENT

  Our bodies heal without permission,

  but our hearts need consent. Give it.

  WORTHY

  I am worthy of light

  of warmth.

  The sun tells me so

  each morning

  no matter

  how many times the moon

  shrugs her cold shoulders

  at me.

  BIOLOGY

  As a woman

  I am always aware

  my womb is empty

  that I am not filled

  but I am starting to know

  the difference now

  between the pang

  of my biology

  and the true aching

  of loneliness.

  OCCUPIED

  Claim yourself.

  Plant flowers

  upon the sill

  of your lashes

  hang signs

  from your mouth

  like a door.

  Let them know

  you are cared for.

  Let them know

  someone is home.

  TOTALITY

  There was never another love

  I needed more than my own.

  PROGRESS

  The past is meant to be re-visited

  preferably

  with a friend

  and a glass of wine

  opening secrets

  like candy wrappers

  letting their bittersweet tastes

  settle on your tongue

  before spitting them

  back out again

  and that is where you leave it—

  you kiss it goodbye.

  You never

  see it again.

  GRACE

  I love how butterflies just flap their wings

  without needing to talk about it.

  MERCY

  I am mostly easy to love

  but when

  I am not

  don’t make it

  harder on me.

  IMMORTAL

  It is the crackle you hear

  from the fire burning you

  down to the ground

  that is your spirit;

  cracking like a whip

  under your skin

  still alive

  still blazing—

  the sound

  of your magic.

  GOLD

  Sometimes

  we hand ourselves over

  to someone
we love

  on a silver platter

  and they still don’t want us

  and maybe

  that is the problem.

  We forget we are gold.

  LESSONS

  I will tell my daughter:

  You will be worshipped. The

  wrong men will fall at your

  feet. You will be demeaned,

  envied—by strangers, best

  friends, sisters, your

  mother. You will not be

  seen—your intelligence,

  your kindness—overlooked.

  You will be bullied, may

  become prey to the fathers

  of friends, brothers of

  friends (you will think it is

  your fault).

  You may not ever have a

  platonic friendship with a

  man, but you will be loved

  many times over by men.

  Many of whom won’t care to

  really know you.

  But what will make you feel

  most alone is being told by

  the world that these

  problems make you lucky. It

  doesn’t. But you mustn’t

  downplay your beauty. You

  should have fun with it.

  Celebrate it. You don’t need

  to make excuses for it, but

  you do need to be aware of

  the effect it has on the

  people around you, because

  once you are aware of its

  effect, you will never take

  any reactions to it to

  heart. You will set it free.

  Only then will you see how

  very little it means at all.

  COLD

  I’ve been told my entire life,

  I’m cold

  because I’ve never

  needed anyone to warm me.

  How do they not see the paradox in that?

  Now they tell me it is

  this kind of aloofness

  this indifference

  this nonchalance

  that makes me cool.

  I’ve been a fire this whole time.

  REVIVAL

  These men

  feel like the death of me

  and it is always women

  over coffee and

  over wine

  bringing me back

  to life again.

  HONEST

  I look at the moon

  and I don’t ask her

  how her night’s been.

  I know

  just by looking at her

  that she is not

  holding her breath

  any more than I am.

  IMPOSSIBLE

  You give your love away too easily,

  that is what

  they tell you

  and only you know why

  because it has always

  felt impossible

  to give it to yourself.

  REVOLUTION

  Women are punished

  for celebrating their sexuality

  when they should be

  celebrating with us

  that despite the efforts

  to get us to hate

  our bodies,

  we love them—

  we enjoy them.

  KINGDOM

  You think I look

  like a queen from the outside?

  Well I can assure you

  that on

  the inside

  I am the whole

  fucking kingdom.

  WILD

  I tie myself

  into knots over you

  thinking of how

  your fingers are going

  to unravel me,

  my clever

  big-boy scout.

  This is what you’d been

  preparing yourself for.

  It was never about

  learning to survive in the wild.

  It was about losing yourself in it.

  RAW

  You did to me

  what I thought

  could never be done.

  You loved me

  and I felt

  every

  single

  bit of it.

  SEXUAL HEALING

  I smile when we make love now.

  I am forgetting the

  memories. Washed clean the

  touch of my hunters from my

  skin. Wiped away the faces I

  used to pull like the girls

  in those videos. Like I am

  in pain. Like I am scared.

  Like I really don’t want it.

  Covered my ears from all

  those Beg for mes and I

  want to make you screams.

  It tastes like honey. It

  feels like sunlight.

  SUNSET

  I am the light

  in your eyes

  and I will be

  taking it with me

  when I leave.

  FRIENDSHIP

  We talk of men

  like we talk of sport,

  licking each other’s paws,

  lazy stories

  falling from our yawns,

  and we love them

  we really do love them—

  but in the way we watch

  the hot sun slipping below

  the horizon

  with relief,

  finding as much joy

  in their goodbye

  as we did in their hello.

  READY

  A lot can happen in 28 days.

  Just ask the moon. In one,

  ask the sun.

  They say it takes 21 days to

  break a habit. But how many

  years does it take to

  unlearn everything that’s

  been taught to you since

  you were a child? Love

  taught to us by people who

  hated themselves.

  How many generations will it

  take for a man to soak the

  war off his skin? How many

  more generations will

  women have to keep running

  the bath—coaxing a man to

  bathe in warmth and

  softness, letting his wounds

  soak in lavender and honey?

  They say life moves in seven-

  year cycles, and if I marked

  mine on a chart, I would lie

  on my stomach like a child

  with crayons scattered

  around me in colors I’ve

  never seen before, and I

  would paint this fifth one

  yellow. Yellow. The color of

  sun melting in the sky like

  butter. Yellow. The color of

  my daughter’s pajamas as

  her small foot slides idly

  next to mine. Yellow. The

  color of the long grass a

  lioness crouches low in,

  waiting to pounce. That is

  me. A lioness. Stalking my

  life before it runs away

  from me again. I am ready

  now. Ready to roar. Ready to

  pounce.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PREY

  Liability

  Paranoid

  Debt

  Sport

  Heads or Tails
r />   Present

  Armor

  Teenage Heroes

  Quick Fixes

  Less

  Witch Hunt

  Different

  D.O.A

  Broken Home

  Deconstruct

  Invaded

  Collateral Damage

  Roam

  Criminals

  Edits

  Masochism

  Clarity

  Swallow

  Adrift

  Prize

  Magician

  Dark Circles

  Young

  Damaged

  Punch-Drunk

  Bruises

  Safe

  Trampled

  Revenge

  White Knights

  Tangled

  Want

  Mutual

  Together

  Fix

  CAPTIVITY

  Starved

  First

  Too Close

  Open

  Tiny

  Chase

  Cold

  Spray Paint

  Tears

  Migrate

  Condiments

  Half-Caf

  Stained

  Share

  Free

  Trust

  Capricious

  Good Girl

  Sticky Situations

  Strange

  Naked

  The Princess and the Pea

  Q&A

  Notice

  Flipside

  Paradox

  Circles

  Light

  Lost

  Hover

  Commit

  Shared

  Advice

  SHARPENING THE CLAWS

  Taste

  Natural

  Reflections

  Fed

  Imagination

  Fairytales

  Leave

  Afraid

  Dominance

  Marked

  No

  Substitute

  Eggshells

  Business

  Heard

  Snare

  Written

  Intolerance

  Spotlight

  Puddles

  Rebellious

  Dignity

  Portrait of a Lady

  Cloth

  Difficult

  Mother

  Complicated

  Dreamcatcher

  Chosen

  Jacqueline in a Box

  Spice

  Validated

  Ass–onists

  Devour

  Settled