GRANATA
The maidens all line up, row by row. Sew their mouths into smiles and
while away the afternoons near the riverbed. The water was red in the morning
so we built a city and called it home. Wrote our own stories in blood against
the walls of the cave that swallowed us. After all, it was all borrowed,
the sky, the sea, the swallowtails that tangled in our hair. No one fared
any better than you at night. Wandering the earth with your eyes stitched shut
by dreams. We tried to offer the gods a rabbit, a pitcher of milk,
but they were stone and cold in the sanctuary. The wind blew through
us like a shell. What hell we could conjure in our bodies, what light.