Dusk after sultry dusk you brood in the window
‘For the air’ you say but we both know
It’s for the darkness.
You flash to the thundercrack of my horses
My arm hard across your stomach wrenching you breathless
All the way down.
Your mother wept for your virginity
While you wept for the narcissus that slipped
unpicked betwixt your fingertips.
I fed you what your mother could not kill:
Roots and bulbs and the business end of my insurrection
You choked them all down.
You are not gentle ever since –
You held the arils in your mouth
Rolled them between your teeth.
You choked them all down.
I spat you back up
And now you rue your cursed freedom and garish fruits from trees
only your mother could love.
Abrielle (Abriel) Sanderson (class of 2009) works in the GCC Math Studio a few days a week. She’s passionate about mathematics and poetry and wishes that the beauty of both arts were less gatekept and more accessible.