your wife: death
the darkness you give others
is the darkness that swallows
you up bit by bit,
eventually even the void will
forget your name or the fact you
even existed;
i tried to give you light so that
you would always have a way
to get back to yourself but you
killed me with your many tongues
of lust in reply—
so i rose up carving my heart free
of any love it still had for you,
leaving only indifference for you on
some days and rage on others;
i can be the villain if you want—
and i will give you the darkness
you so desire, and give you back
to your deepest longing: your wife: death.
the only thing i owe you
you woke the beasts in me
that were sleeping, they were never
dead; and that temper i warned
you about was very real—
thought you could bury her
behind the fires of your lust,
there are no bars that can hold her
back real or imagined;
your gilded cage was no match
for the fire of her flames—
even in the destruction of your lust,
she remained behind promising
of your demise;
they say forgive and forget and you'll
have no regret but i turned the cheek
so many times that i got bruised on both—
instead i'll bury you with your every
tongue of lust so that you won't be lonely
when you wander in the darkness,
some say revenge won't make you happy;
but neither does waiting on karma
so until she reaches you accept this chaos
because it is the only thing i owe you.
Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has eleven published chapbooks the latest being: fat & pretty (Dancing Girl Press, June 2022), four full-length poetry collections, and three micro-chaps. She is also the author of a novella Mates (Alien Buddha Publishing, March 2022). Her first taste of the macabre was the animated Beetlejuice, but her first taste of horror was in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe which she enjoyed; her favorite of his works being the poem The Raven.