Altar

you will call for your mother, in the end,

she thinks as she wipes away

blood-flecked spit from his sandpaper chin;

The almost-last act in a long-lost war

full of countless small surrenders.

it won’t be me you look for, but her,

long gone,

since you always built your home

in the safety of imagined responses

rather than

the searing truth of my insistence;

my claims a weight on all your dreams

heavy fetters rubbing raw your skin,

scabs you expected me to heal using 

only my love

and the balm of my buried needs.

and yet.

When that time comes, “Here I am,” I will whisper; 

my hand a tether for that gentle dream, 

an offering to soothe all your finite fears -

freed, finally, for resurrection.