Calyx of Held, Erasure Poem & Painting by Anna Montgomery based on text by Edith Wharton

my pretenses puddle into a concrete corner dropped low from the weight of accreted ruin
aposiopesis punctuates the sound of languid petals falling from corroded lips kissed with acid Daedalus mewls his fated plea to escape the pain of losing his legacy and his son
while I realize that ancient gods are still emerging, hungry to be acknowledged
in an age of deathless wonders spinning caricatures of the living ghosts we’ve become
I haunt myself, echoing in the ceramic chambers of my heart’s cage crying and scrying puzzle boxes so impossibly tangled no mortal will solve them – oracles refuse to acknowledge temporality as mystic revelations gloriously glitch even through the eyes of others