He asks for rivers and she gushes, fills him with water.
This is the easy part. This is not remaking, the steps that bind - this is a filter, a way to organize, to sort, to keep the mixture apart. He moves and she moves with him.
God bless.
At night, the words black on his lips.
Her lips. Pressed in, the deep slow burn. He is the one pledged but she knows the fabric of bars.
(he is the one pledged but she knows a mantle's weight.)
Wears red in her hair, ribboned out like bone through the skin. A break here.
Blood there.
There is nothing alien in her gods. His, he might have hands. He might have a face that a man could see.
(like looking at the sun.) Missing the mark, the arrow flying wide, the deer flinging its body back into the greenwood, hard and fast and heavy.
She gives him breadth.
Mornings spent in silence. The shallow loop of a grave.
Gold on his fingers, spread over iron. Spread over her own, turning.
Breadth.
She wants to say, there is no need to be ashamed. throw their bodies back.
to the wolves - they will have their fill.
do not carry them on your back any longer.
they are not yours to consume.
She wants to say, when you scream, the very walls shake.
His knife beneath her pillow.
He cuts her neck, long stuttering lines, eyes wide and torn.
She wears her jewels well, glimmering. A veil.
(the woman's hide.)
He does not touch her.
She has been told a woman can be a kingdom.
Could this be imagined: a crown out of wood.
A body out of trees. Upright and reaching.
A sun cored between branches, peeled like fruit.
She has been told a woman can be a kingdom.
She knows she has never been his.
(the boat is slight, holds her in a way that feels like falling, tilted. things in the river are no stranger to skin, yearn for a warmth not their own.
this is to be wed: passive, water-borne. to arrive under nothing like her own power, pulled.
the lantern on the bow holds steady. she does not tremble.
the light peels her hair to gold.)