“And the LORD God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us,
knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand
and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’”
— Genesis 3:22
Dark rivulets made red only in their branches
run down Eve’s thigh, wet and dripping with blood.
She whispers myth. She sings to her daughters
pagan hymns of thunder and fruit.
What prison, what garden
makes a woman a trapped animal, abused by a god?
Her daughters told me of this god—
Yaldabaoth’s many deceitful branches.
I know of his visions and his garden
where he abandoned human experiments, hollow, without blood.
Among the animals, Eve ate and bore sacred fruit—
the precious daughters.
They spoke to me in the night, her daughters,
I am the daughter of Eve alone, daughter of Adam, daughter of God.
I said did you all taste the fruit?
We are the fruit with many branches.
Sophia, unshrouded, said the blessing is blood.
Yes, I said,and freedom from that garden.
Yes, that garden
I will say to my own daughters
when they have unfolded from my blood
and I have walked into the image of a ribbed god.
I will say look upon my branches
and see that they bear fruit.
If you condemn the mother of all living for eating the fruit—
examine your own garden.
Consider if she hangs from burning branches
as a dark warning to keep you or her other daughters
afraid of a blind, insufficient god.
What would our holiness tell us if we claimed its shape as blood?
This red smear on my thigh is my blood
and it is blessed, it is the fruit
of our freedom. Go on and tell your God.
Free your daughters,
leave the garden.
Grow branches.
Live forever.
