She has about her that blueblood sadness,
the gaunt and royal face,
the martyr’s
red circles lurk beneath her eyes.
Sorrow curved her holy spine,
which once
stood straight with vindication,
which once stood straight.
All her hallowed blood was given, her veins are
hollowed, they race with red lines on her skin
they race with red.
Her face is bloated, drowned
but there is still that edge,
that pride there is in madness
in bloody grief.
I shake when I watch her,
the fierce step clacks across the floor,
clacks like chain,
like repeated guillotines
and rolling heads—vive la révolution!
She is next.
I feel the gallows in her shoulders,
I feel the noose around her neck.
We know each other, we whom Death
has marked, the shadow looms under our martyr’s eyes
and holy bloody lips.
She walks away, the storm above her growls for me,
I hear it too.
I wonder about mirrors, and why it is
that, shown our faces in a different light,
we insist that it’s another,
no, that’s not me in the glass,
that’s not my reflection,
the eyes are wrong.