LAVINIA.

Such a voice as mine that trembles to be heard,

In frantic-weeped strips of breathful shudders.

Justice intended from my lips to those who are good known,

Tripped away into desperate calls for a womanly heart.

Marital-bed I was stolen to, now stolen away, as I,

As I witness a pitted loss to life.

Bear him well to the grave I ought to be gifted.

I crave in full longing the silence of my end.

A fruitful offering to a less-than lived life.

Sorrow bore me into piteous woe for brothers lost-

Now let me greet them in that tomb.

Yet pleas for kind heart, for men to be better than that milk of

Cruel breast they suckled in wickedness from, are thrust away.

Such desperation for silence birthed into vying screams, then silence comes from my lips, but ne'er my life.

Then haggard to the world I return, born again,

A hollowed wreck of loss stuffed with merciless branches aching.

And no tongue to speak my worn words of Philomela become.

Savage wild grounds I wander to no refuge of bloody self.

Till I see a face adorned with a love I weep in seeing, shamed face turning to the side.

Rare noise relishes woeful to push forth.

No words to speak, nor words to put down.

In stifled sounding I maketh my mark of grief of self,

Of those I am told my state wounds so deep.

Salt and blood beaten into a blend of aching overthrow

Unending.

Love is supposed in tender touches as I fight to comprehend.

Yearning in a caged battle to speak.

Jabs of pained sighs to tell you them, constrained throat of loss begging you to understand.

My truths you act to know as you speak them countless-

Never caring that it strangles me to hear. To live again and again in those moments of fear, the marks of which stain my mind and stumps and mouth still and you have all the words and you have all the power but you do not understand.

Silence crowns me thorny-

Empress to mine own grief.

Silent forced but I struggle forth.

Drowning girl still breathing as you curse her under with unkind hands, I wrench myself upwards.

A book opens. A page turns.

Words traced upon soft sand - silence me you never shall.

I am that bystander of silent martyrdom.

And you pity me but mark me in my grief still.

And I am bruised, and I cry for words I have none, but still

I am a statue-made in the corner to wrangle justice and

Grieve you further.

And I go. I fall silent to the ground in a fatal weep.

Begged and sought for so long ago and now gifted after tired days of sainted-suffering.

The world gave me no words, I witnessed through lamented eyes, desperate to mark where I could.

Love, so still I did, but the world an object claimed me.

I am your waking grief.

But though I speak no words, I am a woman still, and I am still a self.

Lavinia.