Performance Arts|Poetry-in-Performance|Mercury-Marvin Sunderland|"Split in Janus' Image"

Mercury-Marvin Sunderland

Split in Janus’ Image

i would like to know
what made you split in janus’ image
and turn on me

for i am looking
far into a vast fence
where i can see nothing
but joy

but i would like to know
why my pasture started wilting
why suddenly one day
the grass started to yellow
and flowers struggled to brighten

it seems that
the more i tried to save my garden
the more it dried like a dandelion
pressed between the pages of a large book

i don’t understand
what i did
to suddenly face
the gaslighting that burnt my sprouts
you have made me a forest fire
so many times over

i have asked
for the help of faunus
to rebuild what you took away

i know it might seem funny
that i take the name of the god of messages
yet it still isn’t clear to me
what was the meaning of so many of your words

i would like to know why
one day you’d be a desert sun
and the other you’d be a nighttime blizzard

it seems
that one day you’d be left
and the other you’d be right

if perhaps
the cause was illness
i will tell you that is no excuse
because i have a janus sickness too
and yes it has caused me to burn bridges
and build walls
but it’s both you and i’s responsibility
to roll our sleeves
and repair what has been broken
and break down
what is destroying ourselves

i have been waiting
for so many years
to be given an explanation
for what was so out of the blue

all i really want
is an apology

all i really wanted
was for you to be kind

i know that
i cannot rebuild every bridge
and destroy every wall
and neither can you

there isn’t a day where i don’t miss
what we had
before you split a janus face
and started building walls.

About the writer:
Mercury-Marvin Sunderland (he/him) is a Hellenist transgender autistic gay man from Seattle with Borderline Personality Disorder. He currently attends the Evergreen State College and works for Headline Poetry & Press. Sunderland has been accepted for numerous magazines such as Antioch University LA’s Lunch Ticket Magazine, UC Santa Barbara’s Spectrum Literary Journal, UC Riverside’s Santa Ana River Review, UW-Parkside’s Straylight Magazine, the University of Wyoming’s Owen Wister Review, and The New School’s The Inquisitive Eater. His lifelong dream is to become the most banned author in human history.

Image: Easton Lodge Gardens, Little Easton, Essex, England outdoor café by Acabashi. Digitally manipulated fine art photograph. Original image in-camera: Canon EOS 6D Mark II with Canon EF 24-105mm F4L IS USM lens. Manipulating software includes: GIMP and DxO PhotoLab 2. 2019. By free license.