For weeks she willed the horizon ablaze

with word of triumph

Smoke from her fires     sways lascivious in the mist

She dresses the house for his return

as a snake vestures itself in foliage    biding for prey

Finally the homecoming

Streets filled with petals     laughter     song

Expectant women     scan the victors for their sons

hope ebbing & absconding

She sees him    argentine    mightier than she remembers

feels an unwelcome stab       of tenderness like self-violation

On the carriage next to him     her daughter    alive

tears pulsating     threads of red dancing in the wind

He gleams    godlike    within the conglomeration

closer     closer—        She realizes his trick:

the girl      foreign      not her own

Fury intensifies within her       seizes her by the throat

resolve     floods her gut like semen

She bids him into the tyrian river     beguiling

the bowels of the butcherhouse

House ghosts nab at his feet    salivating for vengeance

he wades on    blind as a god to silent suffering

For ten years he has cheated death as it caressed him unknowingly

thinks himself inviolable     on par with the deathless gods

But her prayers have been steadfast   inerrant   

& Death is generous & heeding

She spinals the blade   

hones her resolve     into promise: 

the moonfall will see him dead

a.d. is drawn to the sacred, the profane, the mysterious and the mythological, which provides inspiration for her work. She is an award-nominated bisexual poet, writer, and visual artist, with words published in HAD, Blood+Honey, MCRB, REDAMANCY Mag, God’s Cruel Joke, HAWKEYE, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, her visual art, mainly photography and self-portraiture, is featured in Hominum Journal, Occulum, RESURRECTION Mag, Antler Velvet, Bleating Thing and other outlets. Tumblr & Twitter: @godstained