we let them eat cake

Gilded and golden and gutted, together

we were saccharine in sugar pearls and

how lovely we were. You, the lamb

sent to the slaughter, set on the rack split

for the butcher, for the king, spine pried

by lock picks. And I, the onlooker,

wide eyed and staring and starving

for something- sick, slick spray of

too sweet champagne, the cake that

wasn’t a cake. You, the virgin girl

gone queen. And I, the laughter under

all the vines in the dark. How the

strings on your marionette doll bodice,

your marionette doll body, they look

so much like vines in the low light,

lovely. You and I were girls again

sanguine not sanguinary, not yet.

The flash quick glint of the guillotine

not yet looming, but we know, I knew,

it was looming and I couldn’t whisper,

stop.

She and I, the sunshine and softness,

powder pale throat bared, a sacrifice

in her body, in her name. Children,

we were both children. Jut wrists bones

and knocked knees and butterfly lashes

and lovely, oh how lovely, we were once

-- formerly published on the now-defunct Nymphs Publications --