those hands were still gritty with clay when they molded me, dirt-flecked from forming angels. when he said lie down, i checked my skin to find it made the same holy disasters as his. i asked
why horizontal is virtue. why my spine breaks to make his horizon flat. no answer in paradise. only humming bees, machine to nectar.
so i slipped the forbidden syllable under my tongue, chewed the name until my mouth filled with feathers. i hissed, spat the garden and woke in red
sand. they say i am mother to monsters, my body a factory no light can illumine. i birth one hundred terrible things before breakfast. one hundred steamwhistle ghosts, symphonies halting in second measure. seraphim
came to my waters' edge, cradling swords like candles. they said, come be fruitful. come back and be whole. they promised sweet
deaths for my children if i didn't slither back to his ribs. i looked at my ten thousand demons crawling out pipes to the sea. i told the angels: so, harvest them.
take my legacy. the bloodline. the possibility of a daughter who looks just like me. i would be a graveyard of my best ideas rather than a garden bursting with unrotting fruit. i prefer
the blade. here, at least, the wind screams like a bandsaw. i own its hunger, the rocks it blesses to sand. i am the only thing in this desert that has chosen its own name.