day 267

Valentine to Edgar Allan Poe
In the voice of first cousin and beloved wife, Virginia Clemm Poe

After father died, mother swallowed the fists of his memory without any water. Our throats were machines of disease. We Poes were born gargling blood. It allowed us to speak doll-like and sing pretty.
When Eddy moved in with us, I learned the meaning of man. Of shouting at the top of your lungs and letting your neighborhood know which boy is yours. I was seven. He was seven at heart.
The day I learned that grandmother fell in love with holding her breath in her sleep, I held my skin even closer to my body. I shivered at the thought of flesh falling into the mouths of dirt eating worms. When cousin Neilson wanted to put a home around mother and I, I cried. I cried until my feet sunk into the mud and my eyes became spineless. There was something in the air that suffocated my conscience. When Eddy wrote to mother, I learned the meaning of man. Of shouting at the top of your lungs and letting your neighborhood know which girl is yours. I was born with a neck filled of butterfly legs and they constantly itched to fly.
When Eddy wrote to mother, I learned the meaning of man and wife. Of letting the hairs on the feet of the butterflies melt into your skin. They only taste with their feet, you know. I was thirteen. We were still seven at heart. He built bookshelves around mother and I and I learned how to sing. I sang until the butterflies drowned in the broken rivers in my throat. When Eddy saw that he taught me to build my own destruction, he cried. He cried because he tried to save me from the body we both shared. He must have forgotten that we Poes were all born gargling blood. He drank his sorrows like water and I drank his tears like ocean. We forget how to swim when the eyes of your lover become spineless. The side of our bed became the shoreline at high tide. He just wished for the waves to wash over him. I never wanted more in my life for our bodies to become eaten by grains of sand. We both sat and watched as our flesh became bits of hour glasses. I held my skin even closer to my body. I shivered at the thought of flesh falling into the mouths of dirt eating worms, so I sang. Like he taught me to sing. And I sang until I bled. Til the side of our bed became home to my ghost.