Cluttered, curtains drawn, on your knees, face
shadowed, flickering and twitching, expectant.
I come home, unsuspecting, preoccupied and bubbling over with
Apollonian spirit, confusion, oh how unsuspecting, this point of tangency
between Leto and Janus: a mother’s face turns in offering
what poor Jocasta immolated in knowing.
In your shroud, you cannot see
and the god of vision has abandoned me.



Circling, the light shimmers on your breasts.
A harvest of grapes and ritual
Dancing, fumbling, a famine in retreat.
O’Divine Eleos!
Madness interjected. Pitied, trauma bound.



What mercy drove the god’s spirit from you in that moment?
Was it wise Athena and her winged fates, bubbling over with
Justice? Or tender Demeter hating to seed on soil born of husband’s toil.
Spared by these good spirits, the miasma
Of further defiling. But far enough, for me.
I left behind a child
At the temple of the cult.