I was born in love, mired in it; in the mud of a woman’s blood. This is a letter. This is a letter, printed on the air above the Atlantic, to the only two who would remember my infant eyes.
Twist the verdict like a bottle cap, until the virtue and the venom spill, staining our necks and fingers with a pink both soft and bitter. Take your medicine. Wade out into the blue ocean between your throat and shoulder. Rest from this. No more pain.
We float on opposite ends of the still water; someone watches from the shore.
How do you explain to your mother that you still love her abuser?
The serpent used to sing to Eve. A lullaby from a kingdom of salt, where white flowers that lived through the winter grew into doves, and scarring on the body, colored sweet as cotton and sea foam, was left there only by choice.
No pain here, Eve.
God would beat the animal for this song. God would beat the animal until it was blinded, its eyes and spine broken into blossom. In the dust, it wept. But it still sang: No more
Even as her hand reached up into the branches, while He soaked the garden in kerosene: still.
pain.The angels with their swords; Eve’s hand, small as a new plum. The serpent sang: No
How do you explain to your father that he is an abuser, and you love him?
pain. The kingdom by the sea; Eve’s hand, opening.
This is an attempt.
I was born in love, buried in it; from snake to woman, from flower to ocean, from god to kerosene. Rest. Take your medicine. Forgive me. Find it in your doves and scars, in your blood and belly, to love me, still. Please,
no pain.
Somewhere, Paradise is burning.
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