Word Wednesdays: Diatom

So I liked the idea of posting a piece of writing every week, but I've run out "Letter's From South America". So I decided that instead, I'm going to start a new project called Word Wednesday's, and post a poem, a prose exceprt, or a piece of flash fiction, whichever tickles my fancy! 

Here's my first entry, hot off the press! Enjoy! 

Diatom

I am a microscopic organism
with glass bones
I am all splintered slivers, symmetrically embedded
smaller than the crystalline ice that
clings to the world
as the morning breaks over the mountains
shatters the darkness
with the dawn 

They found me, swimming in the mouth
of a drowned socialite
I clung to the lipstick smudged
bleeding at the edges
such a bright slash, such a pretty
colour, for me to wear
for my debut beneath
the microscope
It was I who caught the killer, the lover
pickled in cheap whisky and even cheaper
jealousy
my sisters hiding underneath his fingernails

I am the design your architects
strive for
pure, unobstructed symmetry
a body so unique, it transcends the rules
of beauty
my structure is my own, my optimum
functionality
needs not compassion, meets no human expectations
and feels no need to
the weight of humanity cannot break
these thin glass bones


If I were to up and leave this planet
(and the way you’re treating it, I’m thinking I might have to)
you would not breathe, you would not live
or love again
because I make one quarter of
the whole world’s oxygen
but to you it one of your countless clichés
words as hollow as my silica skeleton
I will love you until the end of time
Please
you won’t live to see the end of time
but I will