i. lionhearted girl
with teeth and ambitions bared
in a gentle heart.

ii. the strongest metals
between iron and silver
are your elements.

iii. a force of nature
like a warm ray of sunshine
on a winter day.

I remember a dog with matted fur lounging in the shade
of a collapsed arch, staring in a way that animals sometime
stare that makes me wonder if the beliefs of Kantianism are
nothing more than old wives’ tales spun from smoke and cinder.

I remember the faint smell of sulfur mixed with seawater
in the shadow of the volcano that poured out its wrath
by the bowlful, the golden urns of the gods spilling
fire and magma from the very cradle of hell.

I remember the empty bathhouses, the villas with
half-painted frescoes, the expensive red paints made from
crushed beetle shells, the overturned tables and chairs,
the uneven stone streets carved by horse-drawn cart wheels.

I remember the skeletons huddled in boathouses,
unearthed from their ash-spun graves for prying eyes,
for the rapid shutter of camera lenses, for the proof
of their existence, as if to leer at the living and say,

“We are all nothing but carbon and bone.”

momma said she found me
ten steps from heaven’s porch,
nestled in bloodied saw grass, flickering
fireflies circlin’ like anxious cherubs.

i forgot what i was doing out there—
waist-deep between heaven and hell,
sleeping in Shiloh where bones
rattle and beetle shells fixed with chitin
hum steadily in the dead heat.

“you too young to die,” she says to me,
face all red and sunburned and marred
with tears. sadness becomes a part of her,
alongside mother, and farmhand, and guilt,
and miracle.

my memories slip past me on copper scales,
swimming underneath the current. i am ten
again, wading in the river, pockets full of
rocks and sea glass. i am twenty and the river
has become a fragile stream. i am thirty and
there is nothing but dirt.

i feel my childhood bleeding out of me,
a mix of red crayons, red paper plates
cradling birthday cakes, red kick-*****
at recess, red tulips pressed into my
sister’s cold hands.

momma said she found me
ten steps from heaven’s porch,
just out of reach of the lamplight,
where i left my childhood.

“quo vadis, domine?”

i. you’re saint peter on a cross,
hung upside-down, staring at the
bright blue and if your arms
weren’t pinned to rotting wood
you’d reach out—

(petrus, dear petrus, why
hast thou forsaken me?)

there’s iron in your grip,
fingers curled in supplication
as you, the fisherman from Bethsaida,
bears only his own sins

the pain fades for a moment
under the sunlight and  
you’d smile if your lips didn’t bleed
at the harsh stretch of skin

they poke your side with a spear,
but only red pours out and the
barren ground below you will receive
no nourishment

you are no god, no holy deity
walking to and fro amongst mortals

(O’ you of little faith, why did you doubt?)

martyr, martyr they’ll chime with each
bell toll, thousands of years from now—
long after your body has perished in
the valley between ***** and Gomorrah

you are simon peter, the betrayer, the liar, the
coward
you are oh so human, and the world will
never forgive you for it
bedrock, they’ll call you, and mean it

you’ll be hailed a saint and people will kiss
your bronze image, dust oil against leaden
feet and imagine that your gaze is not fixed
solemnly to the earth

(now, nothing but a false idol to some,
draped in velvet and handed a crown—
the rooster crows, and so god too will
denounce your existence)

cre·a·tion·ism
/krēˈāSHəˌnizəm/

noun

1. did you know we were all stars once?

2. our brains string together branching stars like fairy lights, beacons through the uncharted darkness of humanity's last frontier. the brave wear armor made of starched nylon, wielding scalpels as they forage through the shells of asteroids, the red of dying planets, to find the origins of Adam.

3. they only find shallow graves. decaying neurons grow cold, silver, myelin pooling into tear-stained letters written by trembling hands. forgotten keys. forgotten birthdays. forgotten names. stars collapse one by one, an orchestration of color and sound that feels familiar in its chaos, comforting-- like coming home.

4. they bury each burned-out galaxy with their bare hands. tomorrow,  they promise to the dirt and ash, tomorrow we will voyage to the edge of the universe, full of bright stars, and we will find a new hope.

i. once upon a time, there were old gods and new gods. under crumbling archways the divine and the cursed share cigarettes, lighters cupped in their hands. rain pours relentlessly from the heavens, falling to the uneven cobblestone in a sheen of silver spears and smoke. this time, nothing but prayers are shed.

ii. this is their communion: an errant hand brushes against the marbled form of Hades, rowboats rock harmlessly to the temple of Asclepius, feet shuffle across the white line and into the holy land. it is in these moments that solitude begets peace.

iii. angels tuck in their tired wings, roosting on bridges and cathedrals and alleyway corners spun with ivy. amongst themselves they count the crowds that take shelter in their shadows. every day, the numbers swell until even the loneliest of the celestial feel a warmth in their gilded chests.

iv. these same seneschals pour life through golden urns, as they had done eons before the she-wolf who nursed the founders of Roma was ever born. water flows steadily from all four rivers and through the eagle-face spics that dot the roads, blessed by frail, rosary-stained hands. even the Tiber, full of harsh currents and deep embankments, softens under the touch of a child at a fountain. life flourishes. the gods smile.

v. once upon a time, i met these cursed and divine and celestial beings. all lived together in a city as old as time itself, in a city born from clay, then wrought with brick, and finished in marble. and in this place of impossibilities, i found my heart.
.
.

i found my home