prologue.

The steel plate slips in my work boots. I’ve not been home in a while. I am a liar.

I dream I have some vodka, and a book about her called “The Bubblegum Girl.” She tells everyone my name, and now they’re everywhere.

I leave my wrath in the water, and the water eats the city, and I eat of nothing, for I have not sown. Mechanical tyrants are slain by the unbanked river: if that of them, then what of me?

There’s a pink–flushed face behind my eyelids, and teeth brittle-black that gnash before them. I desecrate the ark of doorways. I know now who watches the watcher.

I do not count the surmounting helplessnesses. It is not safe to sing for me. I am the liar. Sometimes I see bluebirds, so I stay.

I fell upon the yoke of swans. I do not take. I do not bother. Slumped sickly in her hand, I am not like them.

I am third on a match. I count it all joy. The enemy is grinding on me like a drunk slut. Selah.

I see spiders in a man’s mouth. Selah.

I am an accountant, and a mother, and full of cigarette holes. I’ve used my spare tire and there are screws through my fender.

I know blue like no one knows blue. Secured in the orbit: ascend, and witness. I lend my eyes. Yours ring clearer, but mine see you.

There is [confident expectation.] Something is trying to unmake me. I count it all joy.

The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. (1 Samuel 18:1)

Sullen warmth splayed up the neck. Frosted glass to mask raw need.  Softer hands, skull-shaped teeth.  It is holy.

The reverberation of beckoning ritual drum: emanating within the withholding. Quiet, primal imploring. The years-old thrumming headache I carry, precious as weeping child.

The bleeding and breaking for which I am made.

I shall not want, yet want, I am. The anointing of need for stitches in the knees. My starvation, and yours. It is holy.

The rain I bloom in, for you, and rebuke, for you, and defile with devotion - it is holy.

You are ivy and I am viscera. I am loud. I am permission.

I wield God's gift of never being empty. I pry open your hand, and give. I pray open your being, and give.

It is holy.

I am not a tigerlily. I am the water, and the water is me. There is nothing new under the sun. I age swiftly in the currents.

It is the season of breaking. Draw near, I, who have backslidden. It is not new — it is written. I walk in ways already made.

God pulls the trigger. It is His time. He knows you get what you pay for. I double down. I’m double-minded. I renounce the identity of the ill and the broken, though many truths may coexist.

I am not a mother. His grace is sufficient. I am the rook: moving only in the periphery.

My anointed daughter meets my dead one. I’ll not be still. I do not yield.

I am the healed of the Lord.

The crows are eating the trash again.