Mud Ritual

Late in the morning after my birth

when my mouth was already full 

—of copper, milk, 

the faint taste of rain—

the master of the house 

dispensed unto me 

their sticky commerce 

by preaching the maxim:

Silence saves.

Yet when desire descends

—dense deluge of big 

general liquid washing

through the universe—

I’ve seen no one remain

master of their own mind. 

How to fix a formula for silence

in the wake of weather loud

with thunderous snatchings—

all those blind kidnappings 

in the dark?

So when against 

the stormy noon 

it was shouted,

“Pour water on yourself”,

I welcomed myself to the mud

of the pasture floor seeping

and soaked from the rains runoff 

alongside my own pulsing

vagina, weeping in tandem 

with the Earth and her comings 

and goings of monsters made from 

mother’s red clay.

The same swollen clouds that fill

her also filling me fertile 

and famed to fix my blest abode. 

(It was in this ecstasy

I heard god laughing)

Now I am bespattered,

and my own kin mutters against me.

Though I have gained the names 

spoken softly by the dew—

that morning moisture that blankets 

the breeze. Wet like me,

motion and memory are made 

of this same fluid;

They ask me to remain 

still as my own aliveness 

wades through me,

stitching me up with spit and slit 

each time I crack;

I am constantly remade 

without fear through this 

perfect love,

held up by pure will

like the sutures in my back.