erzulie (poem)

i am the waterfall chased by rivers and lakes

i am a well filled with clear poison

i am the step you weren’t warned to mind

i am the cold sweet not made for cones

i am a story written with what looks like pencil and paper

but is really engraved in stone

i must be

after all

all the things in the eye of my beholders

there must be a drought in me

but they leave with dry brittle hands

holding fresh flowers for me to keep

in fact they don’t ever leave

that flaw could be theirs or mine

drugs can kill you fast or slow

stuck either way in the grip of time

blocking your blessings is

looking at a mirror and choosing to see a curse

the true ones are those past mistakes we can’t reverse

i would show you how to break it 

but i’d have to teach you the spells

i could give you the ingredients 

show you how to make it

but you can tell love is missing from how it smells 

i am the waterfalls they warned you not to chase

you took brave steps toward a forbidden feast

and found your undoing in the taste

i’m rarely subtle with how i exist

sweet and hard like sugar cane

tough both to chew and to resist

strands of me stuck between your teeth

as little reminders that i came