build the earth from nothing,
she demanded.

build around me a shield of green and
carve your cityscapes into my ribcage,
burrow deep into my flesh and
drink from my throat like thieves.
i gave you everything but the clothes
on your back and the poison
you stole from my name,
shutting out birdsong and brainwaves for rocketships and
buckets of red that stained my dress like the frost.
i have been bleeding, starving, praying,
but you've only
licked your lips and settled
more comfortably into the rabbit's fur like the demons you are.

an outcry.
we had planted her fingers and
eaten the roots
just as she had asked,
pressed the dark, rich earth between our toes
as blood seeped from the pores of our skin
and acid dripped into the lungs of the children.
we had stood in the cold shivering and knocking
but her door remained sealed
for still she was not pleased.

we had outsmarted her
once before, you see.
twisted glacial rivers and sent showers of sparks towards
the sky in a beauty more precise than arrows,
and by luck of the dice
had turned her pieces round.
but she had shaken us off her shoulder
as easily as a dew droplet or
the shedding of a second skin,
an empty shell that filled with rainwater
when left out for a night.

our punishment was one of unusual origins and
hadn't a fathomable end,
one we couldn't even begin to guess.
our question stands in a noose of gold and silver
and i've a feeling the jury will clatter their knees
to protect the guilty.

and who were we to speak the truth when
the snapping of necks deafened the loudest voice?