Hamartia

Hamartia – Greek hamartanein ‘to err’. An element of cosmic collusion among the hero’s flaw, chance, necessity, and other external forces is essential to bring about the tragic catastrophe.

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her skin speaks of non-conformity, holding moons in its strangeness
dark ink of past story.
each movement of her body is a revolution in its own right.

her god is more forgiving, there is no hell for a momentary lack of clarity
no pleasure is cursed for its unfolding
no love forbidden regardless of borders and definitions.

and what greater sin than to guard the heart from full opening?

she threatens safe illusions, praying in unknown tongues
the light in miracle revealing itself only to eyes that seek it.

***

I am light-body, grief bearer. A house of longing.
What the world gives me reflects my insides: a belly of betrayal, umbilicus marking the betrayal of birth, foetal disappointment.
What inner tyrant deprives this body of love’s nourishment?
What limbs of the mind stifle soul-life, devoting only to what is measurable, casting out the unseen?

The world holds a mirror to my interior, revealing where I starve myself of being.

I create and recreate each morning, prayers cleaving tissues in resilience, renewing hope in spite of these endings.

A tragic flaw, to play with frequency
and love only your own
and rob the lightness of joy from another.

Despite this
I am a lighthouse, my chest pulsating light
in soft perpetuity.