Into the Woods

I must have wandered into the woods with open palms, stitches gushing, my twenty-something wounds advertising broken here.

All my scar tissue, a magnet for men obsessed with mending, boys that respond to women’s cries like an invitation

to console and fill me with delusions of grandeur. I was the project of wannabe martyrs

that bore the cross of a thief, saviors that got drunk off the whine of a woman’s wailing vulnerability, collecting tears like notches—sonic ears

tuned to the pitch of damsels in distress.

’Cause what’s a hero without the conquest and crumbling? In this script, he is the lifeguard and I, the drowning thing he comes running to on steed to tower window

in hopes of being declared a knight—when most knights are dogs in wolves clothing, and most dogs are desperate,

searching for scraps. The test is how fast he arrives at the scene of the burning building, how quickly he pries his claws from around the neck of the red-riding

woman. What he doesn’t know is I store a collection of knives in the pocket of my bruised and fractured frame, train in the skill of bullshit daggers; perfect my archery for he who thinks my body

is made of straw. All my many mouths have compasses, hearts have bows and arrows, and I use prince charming’s cheating ass for target practice.