December 12, 2017

when they call you names

Your hair will grow disconcerted while you sleep, until one morning,
another woman entirely will be staring back at you from the mirror,
a minor goddess who, excluded from the cannon, has quietly
sharpened her nails on the rocks from old volcanoes, thickened
the skin of her back against a low awning of sagebrush, practiced, in silence,
the keening of her own heart. She meet will you in the smudge of that glass.
She will lick her tongue across her teeth, clear her throat, and you will know
she is at the lip of battle. It will take less time than you'd imagined to get dressed,
pull the sword from the shadows of your closet, spit the shine back to the blade.
It doesn't matter that you've never picked it up. You already know how to swing it.