We ask for our cruel palms
to be reddened.
Punishment is forgiveness.
See my sorrows?
How they are sculpted,
still pulling down
in sheer robes over my skin. I have
seven blades for a heart bone.
I am the queen slipped
from her suit, slid underground
where bloodroot still coils
like snakes around the ankles
of that fruit-bearing tree,
still & squirming with temptation
& twisting its black roots.
The only lie I’m left
to lead them with, to make
sweet as the odor of well water,
helps men forget
the body’s revelation.
My birth was not so bloodless.
My rosebitten babe, so blessed
with life, made of myself
a whole Heaven to burst open––
so a new faith is born
through the only opening that rends
this world with cries from that other
silent, seldom one: once,
crowned red with human
will and hurting like a womb,
fate met my embrace, all
winged & wet with thorns.
