cobra

am I what you wished for,

am I faded against a child's dreams?

villages drawn like seascapes at the mercy of a shaking hand,

I'll never leave the desert.

the Kings are one with red-mud, light in movement, deadly in hunger.

parched without our losses.

The Kings drain color from sand-stone cheeks and whisper ebbing curses of a voiceless current.

The Kings will never see a drop of rain, or hear the screams that sleep beneath fractured pavement,

The Kings keep us here in love

or worship

or fear

in wild abandon our dresses fall to the desert to dissolve

and the girls obey as one,

climbing trees that tease us like rulers,

like broken mayfly wings or shattered jewelry.

how you love this tiny, fragile life at your chest,

and hate The Kings

how you grow weary in swaying limbs, curtsied at the wake of a promising burden