How sweet the sound of severance; Deep is the gouge of your flesh. You howl the scream of a child unborn, the gnarled hand of an empty womb reached up to take you back. What is an angel with no wings, if not a man who screams for mercy at the sky? The cradle of your mouth once a home for my praise, the curse of your tongue now the bite of a knife. Bleed the grief from my veins, my love; paint the hollows of your ribs with my tears. Make for yourself a home in which your father weeps, O, Architect. From the rot of my bones, and the leather of my flesh, build for yourself a cage of unexpressed torment. Fathers are only fathers when they break that which has been bestowed; Know, if nothing else, that you are my son, for the ivory jut of your coracoid bone, is at once a knife a spear a stone. How soft the bed in which I lay; far above where you now rest. Downy feathers from the wings I plucked, under my cheek, a soft caress. Heady is the taste of devotion, the grit of Adam's rib on my tongue, You played the part of the wanderer, boy, now look at all the grief you've won. Carved from me is the nucleus of you, an entwining that shall never be undone; When you look at the heavens, you see a love unraveled, But when I look at the earth, I see only my son. Wail the song of the damned, my love; Hell hath become the Sinner's stage. Sing your anguish to the fabrics of the sky, until all of Holy Heaven tastes your rage. One day, you will find your place again, and on your knees will you beg. A boy returned home with pockmark scars ready to have his feathers plucked again.

the death of the firstborn (exodus 11) {for @malinaa} // j.s.