Women's History Month: Saturday, March 13, 2021: Linda M Crate's poem "now i've seen your face"

 

now i’ve seen your face

 

i'm not your voodoo doll,

no more pins and needles;

i am not your marionette

won't pull on my strings—

too long you were a flower

in the secret garden of my heart,

and i tend to hold onto too long

so i decided it was time to

weed the garden;

i don't regret leaving behind the

dead plant of you and i

no amount of water would revive

something already withered and gone—

you may see in me the flowers

of demeter,

but i am persephone;

delicate like a flower

yet powerful as an ocean

with both light and darkness

i have a healthy appreciation for everything

beautiful even the things that people discard—

i guess that's why sometimes i cannot

distinguish between man and monster,

but now that i have seen your true face;

you're not welcome in my kingdom.

 © 2021 Linda M. Crate

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 seven published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017),  splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019), and the samurai (Yellow Arrowing Publishing, October 2020), and two micro-chapbooks Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018) and moon mother (Origami Poems Project, March 2020). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018). She also has three full-length poetry collections, the latest being Mythology of My Bones (Cyberwit, August 2020).