dianeth

today's my birthday.

i know a man who prays that
god will reveal things to me

dianeth,

you're a woman i work with.

if i could just
run my fingers over the silver lines on your hips,

then maybe i would see,
whatever he means,
today i am just twenty.

which, he says, is too young
to understand the evils of women,

but,

i've never found answers
from a man

who believes
the only sacred womb is a virgin's,
and that angels don't bleed;
who is so angry, when mostly,
all i feel is love.

i see the trail you dust with your
dragging wings

you with a face that is every
age at once,

i think you might have rolled
the whole earth from dirt
in your sweet hands

and all our mothers and their fathers,
before they called it a curse,
before we were told to cry at birth
because life is hard, and when you're a girl...

didn't he believe you
were an angel, too?

one day i will give birth
to a daughter,
who will birth, herself, the world,

so i'll name her after you,
and she and i and you will mourn it

not for us ones that bore it,
for the one's we're giving birth to.