The night you disavowed us; arms high above your head
Chhinnamasta, spouting bouquets of rosy blood
decapitating caution, light and sound bring creation’s escape
puppet no longer strung; you were a dark swan with gleaming feathers
Mare de déu de Montserrat with skin of stars
black Madonna, ebony in benediction’s release 
nothing of those apostasy days remain; aside my last glance
watching you carefully close the door, extinguishing light
from filling like a wet flame into my bedroom
bequeathing me caliginous darkness, still hearing your voice
retreating, retreating, retreating, skirts of removal
so heavy against our sewn beseechment to return 
thy fearful symmetry, Vedic Kālī Ma, triple goddess
finding autumn equinox; Demeter and Persephone, join to be three
your familiar smell, the grace of your black walnut arms
Lilith, night magic, archetypes mixing in night’s furnace 
arching over me; La Moreneta, Mary, blessing me to sleep
except I didn’t sleep any longer I wet the bed awake
letting hot piss fill childhood sheets with ire unsaid words 
my rage; a river of urine trickling down infant legs
Yemaya; mother of all; goddess of living oceans
even the salt in the air was perished, riddled with holes 
with your absence my father turned away and became
a monolith staring out of windows, granite and cobalt
no parents here; the wilds beckoned; unsupervised children
ran ragged breathing shallow to hideaways, salvaging
what was left of normalcy in the pages of fantasy and comic
Isis; circle of death and renewal; but you are not dead, nor returned
purloined sweet or pinched apple, stomach clenching
in waves of loss, receding, receding, receding
the sea sable with fury, wild and molten, untamed
by its barbarism and piceous lash, striking rocks like sea snakes
time and again, I heard the sound of your feet on the carpet
then the walkway, then outside, then getting into a cab
engine revving, raven darkness clouding, running to frigid window
car lights weaving through fog, further, further, further
the smell of your perfume on my pillow for days 
the clowns turned their exaggerated mouths downward
I went to school and got into fights, tore books, clogged toilets
with wet paper and wore lipstick and fury on my six-year-old skin
until I too turned calcified, cliff faced, stony, bereft of words
to describe the ache you left, a pressed flower in my heart chambers
your thin wrists and the silver adorning them, your dark eyes
glimmering with escape; I stayed, I stayed, I stayed
in the twilight garden, ten Mahavidya’s circling the moon
taking my sodden bedclothes to the washing machine out
to the corridor we shared with other families, always smelling
of cheap detergent, I suppose we were cheap detergent
unable to get out the stain of loss, try as we might, again, again
my hair grew so fast and so tangled they eventually grabbed
thick plait and cut it off in one chop, a beheading of time
scattered like pomegranate seeds bleeding red through six veils 
your ankles slim and purposeful, careful on the steps
with your heavy bag of reduction, leaving only empty bottles
in our false parent bathroom, to stare at, until eyes stung and
you could only swipe them furiously and grit your little teeth
hardly grown, together in a grimace of coping 
surely a lie, like so many lies, like the lie’s adults decorate
mother archetypes for breakfast, connoting secrets by the abyss, 
the world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces, and poisons
dark mother’s leave like funeral notices
on the closed doors of children seeking succor or justice
the surround of her arms, reassuring, beautiful, gone
gone. 

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