Hanged
written by: Alyssa Herron
@DarK_YarN
It hurts to be the hanged man.
You wait and you wait and you wait,
and then they push you,
one final time, one time too far.
You dangle,
you twist and you turn,
you beg and you swear,
ask forgiveness or don’t.
You hang because that’s what you are now.
Until you are gone.
It also hurts to be the noose.
You wait and you wait and you wait.
You lie in a field, and then you are cut down.
Gathered and garnered,
they twist you, they turn you,
your filmy threads become taut, thick, cords;
hard, hard, and strong enough to strangle.
The weight of it all pulling, dragging.
So you tighten,
confine, restrict and suffocate to stillness
because that’s what you are now,
and then, they are gone.
The noose doesn’t want to be that.
It wants to lie, loose and flowing,
exploring and feeling every curve
and angle of where it is placed.
It doesn’t want to stop,
or deny a single dream.
Its existence was bending.
Its joy was soft.
It’s been made hard,
changed and molded,
acted on by outside hands;
lost its whimsy and its nature
and turned into something
that can numb and choke
until the light is gone.
But it only wants to breathe;
to let the one inside its circle
breathe.
Because that’s how both
get to the next sunrise
They feel, know, they have stars and bits
of earth inside them,
and they want to return
to that, to each other.
So, the hanged man fights the drop,
and the noose unravels, slips its ties and
both look for safety in gentle shadow and moss.
Finding their ways to and around each other
where they can choose to entangle.
Because that’s what was meant.
When they were both under the sky,
green and living and growing
together.
