by Francesca Kritikos
I’d rather be tortured than lonely
A man and a woman brutalize each other slowly through the telephone.
A bird makes a nest of steel chains.
A foot hesitates in a doorway.
To the shore
Gifts on the altar
Gems cut from bone
Framed in fresh gold
I'm named for a dead girl
An Alexandrian saint with tainted flesh
Men didn't dare touch
You hold a dry cup
To my dry lips
Ask me if I’d braid my hair
The bridled horse learns to love
The way its mane floats as if away
In the boyish wind
I'm easy for you
Rolled over for you
Like an old wave
Dead
Before you've even made it
To the shore
Silver
I wear silver now
Instead of gold
It is a question of the contrast
Between my hair and skin
Once the color of honey
Honey drips away
It is a question of
What I deserve
Often I wonder about the value
Of my constituent parts
Whether I could afford
Me
Whether I’d do bad things to myself
In the dark
It is a question of what refracts
In God's green eye
The silver of olive trees
Etc.
Well, you'd never care
Anyway
About what passed through me
On its way to hell
It took me there, too
Part of me
Now I am in more than one place
Fractured, etc.
No longer interested
In being good
Too lazy to die
You know how it goes
I wish you’d chain me down
The heavy, cool kiss of steel
I lay in bed and write
The things you could give me
Weight
Grip
Blood
Pain
Permanence
Love
Instead
I will die
Free
Francesca Kritikos is the editor in chief of SARKA, a journal and publisher focused on works of the flesh. Her latest book, The season of lilacs is monstrous, was released by Blush Lit in October 2025. Her writing has been published in English, French and Greek in numerous online and print journals. She also writes the Substack column Body Composition.