Gillian

Her words, multifaceted.

They are diamonds, but they look like glass.

Her body a bonfire, her hair sticky, glittering strands from a spider to trap.

Her secrets are boarded-up wells

Unsightly to look at, and filled with mold

And rats and creeping crawling things.

They would be a blemish on her if she ever let them out.

Her tongue's a revolver,

Shooting diamond bullets from the ruby-red, poison-swelled barrel of her lips.

You're pathetic, she says to her son

Sprawled on the carpet, a wet dog

With bruises -scales - scales - bruises -

Painted over his face in a harlequin's mask 

Stitched up by her fists.

Can you see the boy behind the bruises

Or the thick sweeps of concealer it takes 

To turn the smudges into shadows, that then completely vanish?

But my little curvaceous feline

(With the jewel-green slitted eyes of a nighttime huntress)

Is tired of her little brown mouse

(Whose puncturing cries never penetrate her rawhide heart)

And she pulls on my shirt

(Her lacquered nails are claws)

And orders me to bed.

We copulated desperately

Like little chocolate people

How could the same hands

That touched me so erotically

Cause such pain?

I had a woman carved out of caramel

But then she filled with alcohol

And turned cold

Not the same woman

That I held in my arms at first. 

And so I left her screaming

 And insulting my manhood

While the same beautiful boy she had beaten

Watched with sorry eyes

Under the umbrella of his sister

"If you had a wife who was a drunk, would you pass her off as a maid?"

"Well, a lush is more presentable than a fruit!" 

But what they never said

Is how hard 

Alcoholics are

To live with.