Babylon’s Dust

Here, beneath the canopy of bright spring light,
I sit where silence imitates gold.
The leaves, writing an odyssey,
whisper of a journey no one planned,
whistling nothingness that rewrote me.

You did not touch my skin,
you tore the veil violently.
A gaze without trace,
a word cut through bone,
all speech whirling, gone.

Ignorance, my tight necklace,
I choked on it.
I needed crushing pain.
The fracture moaned.

You never asked.
I gave you skin, I gave you breath,
I gave you pulse, I gave you death.

In the desert of nonsense
we once passed through,
brushing off Babylon’s dust,
the crushed crown of Nimrud,
splinters in my heart.

A mirror faintly sang:
“You saw, you named, and got it wrong.
Dead, darling, what does it prove
to keep a pulse with nothing to move?
Alone you sit, already overthrown,
still clinging to love’s throne.”