The Incarceration of Eve

ii.
They brought me one night
Twenty seven rubies that flamed
in the palms of their outstretched hands.
,cupped over; and through thick fingers, like angry mouths
the red rubies burning
Proffered to me a song of war
they didn't speak, but chanted.
Take each jewel and swallow it whole
like Death like Ice like Fire.
A truth embedded deep in each will slow dissolve
and teach;
In my stomach a slow burn started.


iii.
Twenty-seven rubies
I've swallowed whole
and they sit inside me like a nest
of eggs, each one exacting, smooth stone
of heaviness


iv.
I met a woman with an eagle's grace,
and her eyes were the wilted blue of lost peonies
she said her name was First Woman;
Look I too am woman but I am not the first
was it less painful when you were the only one?
It's been a long life swallowing rubies
for me, and you said your grandmothers
lived to a-hundred-and-twenty or more


v.
93. Too long too slow. The hourglass shifts
and turns on its head, and sand trickles
slowly back into reversed existence


I grew swollen like a grapefruit
with heaviness
red rubies gathering like glittering seeds
nested, and each time I crack my ankles,
the sure sound of dead branches snapping.
That's how I became
eventually, a tree.


My how it hurts, the slow dawning of realization that with every year you grow one step heavier-




i. And so once again I am in the space in-between
wanting to scream, and
building lost cities on the bridge of my brain;
calling them dreams