“Blow after blow, my heart
couldn’t survive this beating.”
~ Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “Love Opened a Mortal Wound”
The night, the night is a beast with so many beasts
inside it. I long for quiet, for hours that don’t wring
my heart in a vise; no one to care for beyond what I’ve
already done. I can’t change water into wine, peel
the blindness away from eyes that refuse to see. Can’t you
speak of something good that’s happened to you? Throughout
the day, I keep moving from one unfinished task to another:
sorting, mending, counting what yet remains before my bones
burn to ash. I pull out the beautiful things I’d kept
in hopes of that one clear day: all keepsakes, feeble
attempts to give homage to desire. Sometimes, I want to parcel
them out; sometimes I can’t bear to think there’s so little time
left to use them. A door in the hip opens a hinge to pain,
and I cry out for bells, for the moon, for light, for mercy.