The Femme

I.

On the day of my birth, I was pockmarked by the beast and shunned by a dusty pack of preachers. Silence became my world and bigoted fondling my pleasure. My hands grew greasy with sick labor. My eyes grew stretched with reddening nights.

I fled from my ancestral home, sprinting across the starving grass. I lapped up the colors and noises of the modern world, and was savagely beaten. Bloody and exposed, I cast myself into the baroque womb of the marble church.

Enveloped in a lovely incense,

he sang the holy hymns with tender love.

His sweeping robes

softly brushed my fluttering soul.

From his mouth came not the booming voice of God,

but the all-loving song of the martyr.

I snatched his soft smile in my eye

and pursued love in the only way the gods allow.