The Burlesque Onion

 

She turned a burlesque onion,

provocative,

in the too-dim lights of a smoky bar,

peeled off all the layers in slow motion… one by one,

enticing,

to the edge of too far.

They came off at her leisure, teasingly,

a tiny part of her revealed, coquettishly,

with each movement

but, revealed all the same. And it wasn’t deliberate,

no contrived game,

just the onion would never let her

slice right down

to its bones.

It trusted no one

and it set like stone, to blunt and fail

every knife that assailed it.

So all of her came to light

in the pieces that made it...

and was never quite the whole of a moon.

And so, she came to be, all too soon,

in their dreams,

only the strokes of her twisting dance,

that spoke through

caresses of her tender

hands, that kissed and whispered

when all it wanted

was to shout.

Turn, turn, it howled…here it is,

just there, a little to the left,

or right;

a flash of the onion-skin in the dark of

the night,

and gone again

in the blink of an eye.

An eye…

All mine,

this enchanting,

burlesque onion…

Sentences and words, were said,

without thinking,

as she gyrated,

as she spun and whirled.

And thoughts, thought

without ever really thinking

were surely believed

in the glare of her world and her

blinding spotlight: “It’ll be okay, 

and you’ll be alright.

Because you’re always alright.”

Never injured by a storm 

or a battering night... 

And so out of her mouth, came the default

sound-bite, time and time again,

without discerning;

 ‘Are you ok?’ ‘Yes.’

And the onion kept on turning,

whilst another layer fell off her

like satin or lace,

slid down her curves as silk lingerie, and she kicked it away

with a red-painted toe.

She kicked the filthy layer away,

and set eyes upon it where it

lay - there like a dead thing, there like dead skin,

because it wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t the truth.

Her layers were deeper

and dirtier than they knew.

There was new flesh beneath,

that was easily bruised, and tender with

the price of spent trust,

and for each silvery layer, so effortlessly lost,

the onion got smaller,

all the strength of it

pulled to the core.

And feeling with each word,

tinier than before –

I never said it, I never, she thought. 

Rivers of people and noise swam around her,

as the dizzy of words heard in heat,

fell across her. Of all that those throw-away words

had cost her  - and  I never said it,

unless it was true.

And in the morning

the onion

rolled into a new

day and a train carriage right behind her,

and someone had written upon it: get me out of here…

…too many imposters, just get me out.

She stuffed it in her backpack and went

without doubts, in search of moments she had forgotten

that she had once sought;

in search of wide open spaces, where no root-thoughts,

but all of the onions grew.

Big open spaces, the filthy parts of her knew,

were there only to hide amongst. There to conceal for however long

it took, to be somewhere you could be

somebody else;

a place to be smarter than the onion, still peeling,

on its shelf, in the larder of your thoughts ,

somewhere to be stronger

than the tears it brought and to know only words

from the truth:

“Ah but you’ll be alright…” she heard it whisper,

as it tried to take hold and root

at her ever-watchful back,

and she took the onion in anger,

and with a deafening thwack, she hurled it

across the spaces

at the closest of the trees –

“I will,” she told it, “in the arms of verity,

where I trust, I am safe

being me.” And she walked away,

with an embrace all around, and a thousand things to reveal

and be opened, and found,

in the aching

of passion’s beautiful hours

and the burlesque onion

lay shattered

in pieces, amongst the ground’s sweet flowers.