Under a low-hanging branch of magnolia,
a foolish young person lay breathing his last.
He bled out his guts to the soft-stirring air,
Soothed as white petals, like ghosts, flitted past.
A foolish young person believed those around him,
A foolish young person left Mother at home.
While many would say that she tearfully warned him,
She was one among many who told him to go.
She told him of bravery, bloodline, nobility,
And of destitution, tables yet to turn.
Under the branch that snows down white magnolia,
He bleeds out remembering others’ words.

Under a spice-scented branch of magnolia,
He thinks of the will of a God he knows not.
God would not wish for the sins he’s committed;
This murderer is not on his way to meet God.
He thinks himself hero, and calls himself savior,
Conservator of all that his short life has known.
To keep others underfoot, deprived, and in chains,
He gives up his body, his blood, and his bone.

Under a low-hanging branch of magnolia,
His heartbeat an abacus, he tallies up deeds.
He fought not for money, he fought not for "rights,"
That reasoning is long since lost to the weeds.
He fought not for love of the branch of magnolia;
He fought not for dignity, the saving of face.
He fought for one thing, and one ugly thing only:
A life lived as if of superior race.
One could say he did not know his own motivation,
Because he so fervently deluded himself,
And many, thereafter, denied it as well,
Till they worshipped the rag that led him to death.

I know you always saw yourself a knight
But I did not realize for a long time
That I was a page.
You were my sparring partner
Who taught me to come at the world
Gun drawn
So no one could out-shoot me.
You told me,
And I know,
That Justice wears a blindfold because
She slashes her sword indiscriminately,
And looks at that scale
Never.

You always saw yourself a lawman
I always saw you as a fool.
I never realized I learned law
At your feet.
Fallacies and ways of
Drawing out argument and diatribe,
Loopholes of morality through which
We spin.
You taught me to be technically correct,
The best kind of correct,
Always exploiting but
Always within my jurisdiction.
I only know now I was a deputy
To a sheriff of ridiculous stature.

You taught me THE ART OF WAR.
It was engraved in stone for me
Like an all-caps Roman monument.
THE ART OF WAR
Is sprawled across a stone archway in my mind
Where you came, and you saw.
It marks your conquest.

You made it my way of loving,
Of relating to the world and the people around me.
You made me a martyr and mercenary,
Standing atop a hill in golden armor,
Sunlight behind me and wind in my hair,
An avatar of Durga,
A disciple of Joan of Arc,
A four-year-old poses in chainmail
You wrought for her.
Illusions of grandeur such as your own
Come with this territory.

You taught me
As your mother and father
And grandparents
Taught you,
THE ART OF WAR-
That love is just begrudging words of sweetness
Issued only after ruins lay all around
And both parties are sufficiently vulnerable,
Their bricks having been pried away with crowbars.
Love is only an apology given to mollify
The wounds you have already wrought.
The only privilege loved-ones are afforded,
Is the bandage that covers up the customary
Destruction
That is your normal face.

You and I only ever knew love as
You clipping my wings
And I breaking free to spray
The shrapnel of those chains
Into your face.
We added to each others' pile of scars.
It was so rare for us to run into battle together,
On the same side,
Voices as one in a battlecry.
I don't even know how long it's been since
Us soldiers-for-hire got hired
By the same team at once.

You cast me out of steel
Like a sword.
And now I am the legendary blade
Destined to clash against you for all eternity.
We will only ever know ceasefires
Of a day in length.
We will run through the flame,
And we will practice the art
You taught me.

Someday when you want to find me
Look for someone whose patron is inborn adversity.
I will be Angkor Wat whose foundation rots,
And the temple still stands.
Look in the oasis for an arrogant rider,
Whose horse strives to throw her off at every turn,
Yet she is still clinging on,
And thinks herself a rider of Dragons and scaly lizards.
In the reflections on the surface of her eyes,
I will be there right now,
And she will be a different human,
The kind of icon I always thought I would become.
Look for the specter of madness and fatigue,
There you will find my fully-fledged self.
When we look at babies
And tell them they will grow into beautiful young women
We don't even know what we're saying.

Sweet things, Soft things:
Fingers brushing clean counters.
A skirt spread neatly over a lap.
People dreaming together, in a morninglit room where a fan blows,
And riffles papers.
Closed eyes.
Cats' paws.
Quiet steps mindful of a sleeping house.
None are important,
They are hardly original.
But often I close my eyes,
Let soft light filter through the capillaries,
And dwell on them so that I may
Escape that which is bitter,
That which is hard.

I went out looking for flowers for you
When even the daffodils hadn't yet peeked out.
I imagined myself finding three white flowers,
Pale maidens, quiet and starchy and stiff.
I imagined them singing you to sleep,
And it kept me warm while I looked.
I found none on the cold brown forest floor,
Covered in moldy ice and
Leaves transformed into ugly panes of glass.

The trees' branches were so thin,
Just curled and knotted black rope
Against a clean sky, white as a hospital sheet.
The boughs tangled up in bows,
And I wished that I could take them
And gather them in a vase for you, like flowers.
Like any picture written in branches,
If I shifted slightly,
They tangled at different points,
And I could never have gathered those new pictures.
Not in a million years...

Everything around me was the blank white of things asleep,
All bones and marble and the cotton at the top of a pill bottle.
I stood in that white so long my face felt red.
I went inside.
It felt wrong to abandon my quest,
But I knew it was thankless, fruitless,
Stupid to look for flowers in winter.
I knew, too, it could do you no good,
Whether you had flowers or not.

How like you it was that you should go
When the flowers did
And leave me with nothing
To offer.

The weight of four years
Of sleepless nights
Is heavy.
It brings the sickness.
There is no certainty of death,
I cannot say
"I will die tomorrow."
But I know a feeling,
And would not think it foreign,
If a cold hand came to rest on my shoulder.
If the crow lit on my head,
I would not find it strange.
I did not pack the bags,
But all the same,
I'm ready for the trip.
I cannot say
"I will die tomorrow, the day after, or in a year."
I can say
"I will die someday,
And already I know how it would feel."

I used to stand, a little girl,
In the face of the mighty River,
And try my luck against the current,
Till my thin frame would shiver.
The River was a muscled god
Of milky Grecian marble,
Who'd swallow up the flotsam,
While the safer songbirds warbled.
My mother told me "stay away,
The River, he is hungry,
He'll twist you round and break your bones
And take your sweet self from me."
And, from then on, I'd heed her word,
And steer clear of the River,
Or throw in sticks to harm it,
Vainly, watch them be devoured.
And sometimes, when the rain came down
For long days at a time,
The River would rise from his bed,
To drown all that was mine.
So he got many over on me,
And I, nothing on him.
The River was so sly, you see,
The Devil, just too slim.
And then I grew up proud
And beautiful, and moved away,
To a moneyed place in the northern states,
Where the River stayed away.
But I met a man just like that Body
Rolling, roiling, wild,
That took and drowned all I did have
And left me with a child.
And my mother took me in again,
And told me just the same,
To shun the River, guard myself,
A man's worse than his name.
I took to daring, once again,
That arctic current down,
I'd dip my toes in evening time,
And smooth my forehead's frown.
I'd talk to him, my belly swole,
Confide in the River wild,
I prayed to God in the water's hearing,
That I did not need the child.
The River told me he would help,
That I could use his ways,
For he wanted only sacrifice,
And I wanted not the blame.
So I waded in, the hands of water
Cupped beneath my thighs,
And the River's water turned blood red,
And my eyes rolled to the sky.
Now I live alone again.
Playing mother was not my lot.
The River took my baby in,
Because my arms could not.