The Lesson

Photo by Belle Hunt, on Unsplash

The lesson is absolutely televised. It is the beating down of what makes you feel whole. It is the pit that is planted in the earth of your gut and then sprouts. Out of your mouth tumbles vines wrapped in the bloodiest barbs. You taste blood in your own throat. You know this plant. It isn’t supposed to be here, you think. The lesson is in making you question connection. His hair, ballooning to the rafters of the Wachovia Center—but only on one side; half of a lion’s mane, the other half already pressed, laid, and loved to the scalp. The red-painted nails reap, harvest, take more and more and more mane until it is no more, and atop sits only a crown no one wants. The plant doesn’t like this. Its vines grow three times in size, cracking your lips and tearing at your gums. You’ve never held your mouth open this long because no one has made you. In its displeasure this plant binds your wrists. You struggle but it is no use. You are no longer in control. This is best. This is what this Big Ass Shop of Horrors wants. Your docility, your complicity. This is the worst thing, you’re sure. Not the pain of losing limb and voice, no. The crown. That’s the worst.

This is the lesson.