SHANTIH

"Confessional" it is. (Yoda inversion deliberate)

Shantih

No longer do I taste each tear,
or hear the sirens drawing near
(Is it not somehow much too strange
how rapidly the dreams can change?)
I hear instead, inside my head,
the rasp of tongue, the gasp of breath
from tortured lung and then, and then -
I rest content.
And then I know, the truth is told
this time - this time.

I roll across the crimson sheets
and as I stretch
you reach -
you reach -
and bring me down with tiger teeth.
Love, not for naught
does tiger prowl
and not for naught
does tigress crawl -
her belly low against the ground.

I hear the baying of the hounds –
(like mermaid songs that don’t belong)
and now I hear them singing where
the sirens always sang before.

Tonight, I hunger for the taste
of tiger tooth and tiger grace.
Somewhere in a different place,
I bruised, I bruised, I bled inside.
I hid before. I will not hide.
It's time, it's time.

The sirens lied.