Mother,
My black roses thrive in
a palace made of ivory
and bone
He has blossomed
in me from
the beginning
Our nights
are lust and scarlet
His ice eyes thaw
Gold
He bites the red seeds
Off my skin
His hair smears
Shadow
on my hips I grow thorns
In my skin, on the walls,
In his heart
His rattle for a heartbeat
Found its chasms between my
Wine-soaked thighs
He cries
I am his redemption
His tears are bloodstains
on the ground
We scorch the Earth’s core
and leave it molten
when we collide
He made me wings
With the bones
Of a hell-hound
for me to fly
Where I wished
I flew to straight
to his throne
They lied to you,
Mother,
When they said
I let out cries
Like burnt sunflowers
When I descended into
the Inferno
When he came
to me,
I chained him to my
ankle with
the laurel wreaths
so flowers and death
would interlace
for all the days to come
I nurse his hurt
the way I watched you
tend to your fields.
But he can never heal
He is made of too much
Death
for happiness
too little
Death
for Disintegration
He falls everyday
(he cannot seem to remember
the shade of the sky
no matter how hard he tries)
I raise him with my vines
and full, bursting lips
Every night
The mountains weep fire
when we
make love
He falls, every day,
to the grief
in his marrow.
He can never heal,
and I will never leave