Vows of Silence

it is winter here: wilted roses, white on white on white
patterned by poppies, or pooling blood. I am learning solitude,
restraining snowfall, and longing for a world non-existent
where Venus fumbles her amphora, where it falls from Olympus
and shatters at my doorstep,
blooming into a dozen ceramic tulips.

if I were to steal it from her hands, grasp its sable carriers,
throw her treasure overboard, as her lover Hephaestus once fell:
would you play jury at my trial, unfurl evidence of childlike innocence?
I dream it: my attorney justifies a wild animal's bite by its circumstance,
the timid and aged winter, ignorance and naivety
an acute case of cabin fever.

a meaningless verdict: condemned to marble or snow, a flowerpot, a windowsill;
perennials without guarantee of rebirth, clipped and maimed to be eaten
with the limbs of tulips. It makes no difference. I will play thief,
and I will knock her glass off the table, my fate prescribed a thousand years prior
in ancient texts of kings and warlords,
twice as bright and half as long.

I have waited for you to arrive, weaving red petals into three arrow shafts.
your eyes frost over at my self-imposed imprisonment: no lock, nor key,
demanding to know reasons I don't have.
I offer my craftsmanship, weaponry built out of aspirations for sainthood,
and bending the bow of my jilted lover, its point held to my pale chest, I beg you:
pass me your judgement, your fury and love, your verdict and sentence
and I will find redemption under tulips at spring.

Feb. 06, 2024