prodigal daughter
and the world sang, you will live with this blood
and it will love you like a kiss;
spilling down your throat
dripping out a slit.
and they will see the shimmering silt
at the dried riverbed and search
for the body, only to find
an already severed head, unknowing
what to make of it—
as if its making will not be with
the hands that grip the mud
of a sinuous delta,
that tune the tendons
of a slaughtered calf;
or mime the heavenly gestures
of creator or cremator,
exsanguinating stars into night.
blind and mute as brothers
born centuries apart,
they will clamber eternity’s corridor,
naked for absolution,
before donning the heedless sprouting
of lips in the valley, mouthing
I am sorry
I was born miraculous,
from the incisions you made
in search of the words
of your dreaming.
I am sorry you
are of god and I
of the tongue unfurling
to divulge
the prodigal daughter.
she cannot hear your cries of cosmos;
she need not ask for salvation.
long gone, she slices her
neck of stifled song and
lets it bleed into
her skull, a chalice.
mesmerizing. start a religion. or let another build a church around you