Hope I (Gustav Klimt 1903)

This ferment within me is already sucking

life out of me. A bag of leeches swimming

in the blood they crave, bloat me into some

long drowned animal on the mud gorged

banks of a polluted dead river. And this is

only initiation into a lifetime of bleeding out.

Shortly it will extrude from its squat and

demand the rest of my body, hanging off

it tick-like, slowly expanding into its elastic  

skin forming a bulbous pink circus balloon

with black cavernous eyes hypnotising me.

Tricking me into believing I am a mother

when I know I am a free spirit. A Grecian

nymph, a plaything of gods and goddesses

who gifted me to dance eternally on slopes

of Oros Olympos. Instead, this parasite will

release its spell when it’s sated and abandon

me to hollow days as an empty sagging thing.