Exsanguination Poem by Leila Ired

I am
at heart
a saltwater creature
No crystal brooks or placid streams
Shall ever run timid through my veins.

In them
the tide
moves intrepid
'Til I burn with the light of sunlit waters
And freeze in the darkness of the bone deep sea.

-A sea
not clear
but fiercely scarlet
One that sings the dirge of the drowning sailor
And froths with fury in a world gone mad.

Confine me not
to these calm clear waters
But give me the fickle humors
typhoon and tempest
the waves and the currents of the fair cruel sea.
Just as the tears run bittersweet
from between my closed eyelids
And the blood burns through my jugular
to the corners of my mind.