i.
your shoulder blades bend themselves back into wings,
your spine bows under the curved chapel roof ;

ii.
you say gabriel visits you in your sleep,
tells you with to cold eyes and bared teeth soaked in crimson
that you are the messiah,
before speaking about the end of the world,
the ichor in your palms.
red hyacinth dust drifts off his eyelashes,
and apathy falls off his tongue like boiling blood.

iii.
for the next month, there are bruises on your elbows and the remnants of a dead language rattling in your lungs. you wake up in the river, thighs carved with sigils and crows perching on your shoulders, weeping ichor and ancient clay. the names of your newfound kin ring in your ears until your partner confesses that you scream them in your sleep.

iv.
Gabriel visits again, six months after you
realize that your native language has
slipped from your tongue and realize that seclusion is more of a gift than another cross for you to bear, afterwards, you tell me that he had four sets of wings, three eyes, and seventeen hearts, and the most unusual feature was the trembling in his steps, his inability to remain still as he phased in and out of this world into another.

v.
you say his reverence was a holy march, a fragment of bone, an aching lung.

/'god / es/
noun
1. you know what it is to be holy. deep veins filled with ichor ache for wounds the earth feels, lightning storms and hurricane pain walking hand in hand across a ground you helped design. the thousand voices that scream your name in both battle chant and song. their lives are not a game but you play anyway.
2. you are sharp edged steel. a lone fragment of a shattered mirror, the broken bone reflection of a cruel smile. all that you are is ripped edges and cracked glass but your heart still throbs with lioness blood.
3. ichor drips from your fingertips, gold glistens on your lips. you took to power like Icarus took to the sky and you know your fall will be just as sweet.

Maybe that boy just wanted a taste of the sun.

They tell me I'm fussy; with lovers, with books, with music. I tell them that I would rather freeze than be barely-warm. I tell them that if it doesn't set me on fire, then no thank you, I don't want it. It's taken me years to confess that I would rather be alone than settle. The truth is, I cannot stand the taste of in-betweens. Half- measures will never be a part of me. If it cannot fill me up to the brim, I don't want it. I will only ever be empty or overflowing and I'm okay with it. And they say, girl, how do you think a wildfire starts? From a spark. Relationships need kindling. And I cannot make them understand than I am not afraid to build on things, to work hard and relentlessly on something, but I must stop apologising for the fact that, truth be told, I cannot seem to want a love that does not engulf me. Someone once told me that when you've tasted fire, you ache for it, no matter how badly it burned your tongue. They weren't wrong.

Maybe Icarus knew what he was doing all along.

you rip apart the seams of this family
you are a hurricane and we are the destruction in your wake
you are a wildfire and we are burned
you are an earthquake but you aren't the one rattled
you have caused mass destruction and singed everyone you touched
you hate us
you natural disaster

There is a wildness still in England that will not feed
In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer's hand,
Easy to ****, not easy to tame. It will never breed
In a zoo for the public pleasure. It will not be planned.

Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgerow folk
Cannot swell the rejoicings at this new world you make -
We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke
As Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake.

A new scent troubles the air -- to you, friendly perhaps
But we with animal wisdom have understood that smell.
To all our kind its message is Guns, Ferrets, and Traps,
And a Ministry gassing the little holes in which we dwell.

"What does the sentence "If you eat this fruit you will die" mean for Eve who is in a place where there is no death?"

i. I wasn't always a house on fire, but I've always been full of light.

ii. Constellations get named after either heroes or griefs. Wild heroes. Wild griefs. The outpour of emotions within me is ancient, bronze-tipped, earth-changing.

iii. Someday I will return to the salt and the sea. Someday to the sun.

He was bored so you created me.

It was painful for both of us,
When you clawed at his ribs
Searching.
Your fingernails tearing out the calcium in his bones.

And his bones became my muscles,
And the muscles became my skin,

And i was naked,
and he and you were pleased.

He and i were on ambivalent terms,
But we knew we were there because you
Wanted us to be.
And we knew that was why
The fruit and animals existed;
And these were good things, we
Enjoyed them.

Later I'd blame the snake.
He reeked of knowledge;
I was interested,
I didn't know they'd use my story as an excuse
To pound curiosity out of woman.

I ate the apple
Its juice dribbled down my chin,

I realised things.

He ate the apple too; you were angry at us.
And i committed the original sin.
I realised that even though you had made the world
And me as a plaything,

My body would be a vessel for a new species.
And they would take
This earth from you.