I’ll tell it to you, my greatest fear.
I’ll tell it to you because I must say it. I must say it.
It is the refusal to be forgiven for my still-bleeding,
for the color of me, for the rivers of blood
that might spill out of me.

It is the coming of the moon
unchanging in its quiet loving
the waking of the sun,
fiercely singing in its ever-burning,
and their never-meeting
never-touching.
It is God’s demanding of this.
It is nature’s demanding of this.

It’s to sit and look past some baby’s eye
as she tells me with her softest breath,
“I can’t love you. Not like this.”
because it echoes, and it echoes,
The moon and sun in their never-meeting,
the joys of life inevitably ever-fleeting,
Nature. Nature. The will of God:
“Nobody will want me.
Not anymore.
Not like this.”