Haze scatters blue light on a planet.
Frought women, livid, made into peonies by Aphrodites that caught their men flirting and blamed the women, flushed red.
Frought women, livid, chrysanthemums, dimmed until the end of the season, exchanged and retained like property.
Blue women enter along the sides of her red Torii gates,
belayed, branded and belled,
a plangent sound.
By candles, colored lights and dried flowers,
she’s sitting inside on a concrete floor,
punctures and ruin burnished with paper,
boiling burnt lime from lime mortar.
Glass ***** on the ceiling,
she moves the beads of a Palestinian glass bead bracelet she holds in her hands.
She bends light to make shadows against thin wooden slats curved along the wall
and straight across the ceiling.
A metier, she invents tinctures,
juniper berries and cotton *****.
Loamy soil in the center of the room,
a hawthorn tree stands alone,
a gateway for fairies,
large stones at the base protecting,
its branches a barrier.
Its leaves and shoots make bread and cheese.
Its berries, red skin and yellow flesh, make jam.
Green bamboo stakes for the peonies when they whither from the weight of their petals
and lime in the soil,
she adds wood chips to the burnt lime in the kiln,
unrolled paper, spools, and wire hanging.
Wood prayer beads connect her to the earth;
the tassels on the end of the beads connect her to spirit, to higher truth.
Minerals, marine mud and warm basins of seawater on a flower covered desk,
she adds slaked lime to the burnt lime and wood chips.
The lime converts to paper,
trauma victims speak,
light through butterfly wings.
She’s plumeria with curved petals, thick, holding water.
I’m so grateful that women have websites to write about how they’ve suffered and there are people trying to help women heal that read their stories.
