Blackberries spilled through her front yard,
lanterns full of dark sugar. She wore
her pink skirts among the bushes till they bled.
School was a different story
every day: Balboa discovering the Pacific,
Petrarch discovering love. When Madame Curie
discovered radium she died of cancer.
Her name was Lúthien, and her feet twinkled like stars.
Her name was Eva, and she got blamed for everything.
Her name was Ann, and she lost her head.
We use this phrase for love as well as murder.
Her name was Portia, and Solomon was an admirer.
Oh, one day Virginia really did lose her head
in the valentine sense, blindly. She loved everything.
Her lucid hips and the way the salt ducked
over the bow of her sailing boat delighted her.
She loved men: they bowled straight at answers
and their chins were like mown lawns.
She loved women too, their smart hands, the hearts
full of tiny rooms opening into other rooms.
Today she thinks: I too have such a heart.
Mercedes walks a street made of billboards.
She weaves a family from a spider web of compromises.
Over her shoulder Madame Curie glows
like a quarantined star, queasily brilliant. By that light
she reads Aristotle and by it she comes home
in the early mornings, stockings askew.
Something hardens - anger or a barnacle.
Suddenly she is always shouting. The doors
in her heart close two by two by two.
She loves everything, everything.
One day she will kill herself by walking
into an oven with stones in her pockets.
(Source: moonteeth)
