Stung
Split empty, drilled, filled not just with grief
but an urge for it, a calm simple mouth:
Look what a thing I’ve become.
But when it happened,
when the tearing first landed, it was happiness that seized me,
little conqueror, colonizer . . .
When it happened,
an arrow bending down, was a knowledge sated me:
I was chosen; I could fit this blood—
You touched me (pleasure-knowledge).
Said I made you hard (knowledge-pain).
I let. I opened.
My body less a body, more the wounds I found blooming in its flesh,
each its own gentle sainthood, a readiness for death.