The Warning Poem by Jesse Ellsbury

“You have the right to remain vibrant,
anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of love;
you have the right to take this journey
if you cannot afford it, one will be provided for you by your mate.”

These words you said to me in your cruiser
as my hands writhed in your silken cuffs,
my eyes held fast between your lips.
My tongue danced on syllables across your icy kiss.
Your hands escorted my angles as you interviewed me,
centrifuged me to the rhythms of the bars
where you imprisoned me behind your fingers.

You took my heart as evidence and took footprints of my tongue
while I accused you of stealing the sun and keeping it in your eyelids.
You booked me for possession of spirit so I told you to blow
and called you the resurrection of my dreams.
I rolled my cup across 12 bars of blue,
you lashed my hand with your eyes.
I accused you of brutality with words of yellow silver.
You kissed me on the cheek and said,
“So sue me, ” with your slitherin’ tongue
dancing between your piano-key teeth.

The cage was irony, your voice was sireny as you tried to silence me.
I sang like the jailbirds you romance by day
and hissed like the vampires you drink from at night.
Time oozed by like molasses, my dreams sped by like ghouls,
your voice a ping-pong ball in my skull,
your piano-wire hair pierced my eyes like a flood,
your thighs cuffed my knees, I caught you like a disease,
but I was the one who wasn’t free.

I was under house arrest in your head,
I looked out of the world through your eyes.
Visitors came and prisoners went, paying the fines of your love.
The pupils of your eyes were badges, your nametag was my mouth.
I knocked on the bridge of your nose to get out
but the doors of your lips remained closed.

I tunneled out through your ears, scratching, digging with my pencil.
I scrawled depositions on your brain. You issued a warrant for my arrest
and a restraining order on the same document,
while my heart bleeds in your hands in the evidence locker.