Maiden in the ashes
Robed in silk
Robbed of milk
No mark on your tender skin
No sign of turmoil within
The coal does not yet scorch your soul
...
You walk your delicate path
Bearing the sightly, brightly beaten cut bloom of spring
Luscious petals not yet knowing
They will drop from the stem
No seeds to plant, and not her fault
the only water here tainted with salt
And the ground here is hard, turned up in its roots
And the soft garden bed tamped down by boots
Do you know the path you tread does not want you?
Do you not yet feel the cut of the stone or burning of the coal to your sole?
Or does this black earth need your bloodstained steps as much as you need to bleed them
Is it possible for one woman's blood to nourish this dead soil back to life?
And one woman's love to seed them

The kitchen table is an altar
To the only god I've ever known
When I fail and when I falter
She makes my weariness feel like home

Bite my tongue to pieces,
I smile behind bloodred lips ,
Does the sweet scarlet curve entice you, my love?
My gold light under your cold sight eclipsed,
.
Have I made myself palatable enough
To be consumed?
Or does my bleeding flesh pollute, too pungent and sour
For the likes of your gluttonous love to devour

I don't know how to end it but I love a new start,
Devoted and lost, homelessness of the heart

'I was beautiful once,'
    she said,
                  her weathered hands mending another torn patch on an old travelling cloak;

"It was good in its own way, I suppose,
    But it no longer had use for me.
...
I wore the beauty over my shoulders like
  A second skin,
          like a gifted jacket
                                 which I one day outgrew.
...
My interests turned to other purposes,
          And she was tucked away alongside the other tokens of my youth"

She stood, shaking out the quilt on her lap
     which flared in kaleidoscopic colour -
an intricate map
                     of tiny knots and stitches which had layered over years of constant mending,


"I make my own clothes now"







.

Maybe you called my name
( in hundreds of languages I couldn't speak, )
Or maybe
You said nothing at all
.
Maybe your love was so incomprehensibly encompassing I could not tell the difference between it and the very air I breathe -

Or maybe

It was comprehensively small

It rained today,
The first rain in forever.
It smelled nice;
A great wet sigh of relief

I didn't miss it until today-
When the raw thunder rolled over my back
When the crisp grass softened
And mists poured thickly through the rippling trees
I love and I loathe
The endless rolling days of grey
That pulls over the sky like white sheets
Tucking us in to the earth; soft and small and damp and sweet

But maybe tonight, the pattering tap
Will pull me so softly
To sleep