Tuesday, July 29, 2008

15.


I have broken loose from my case. You toss me downriver like a lucky bottle and the glass green message I carry: these bonnets are damned uncomfortable, and without the love of God I’d never get through a day in one.

Don’t doubt a minute that my own heart hurt as Penelope walked along the bank searching for a proper switch. And as I struck her with it, I felt the fire myself: a punishment for us both. Better this now, I whispered, than for eternity. Feel your sharp sin now so there is time for repentance, and after that cake.

She didn’t go hungry. I fed my children no matter what they did. I would give it to them from my own mouth, my own wrist. You doubt, you question, as if you are not brutal. You chew the bird one century after I snapped its neck.

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