Flesh, unblessed / rendered unholy with no mourning
by man as the knife descends / cracking open the architecture of bone.
Grapes, spilled / signs of a mass murder
vintner turned murderer turned connoisseur.
Amber and gold and bronze and silver in a glass.
They shine under dimming lights, they burn through coiled muscles.
Two lives like double helixes, uprooting themselves
far from a million lifetimes’ worth of conformity —
I know Father will not speak of it / his sealed mouth
is testament/ a weight upon my back
that girls like me send ourselves to the slaughterhouse
to cut off glimmers of discordance / disobedience,
I learned to put out fires with my bare hands
even before I knew what free-falling to love meant.
About the author
Saquina Karla C. Guiam is from the Philippines. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Transcending Shadows Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Fem Lit Mag, Outlook Springs, Crab Fat Magazine, and others. She is the Roots nonfiction editor of Rambutan Literary and the Social Media Manager for Umbel & Panicle. Her website is http://isling.weebly.com.