Yes, my Goddess, who lies on her fingertips and becomes her muse by night, her words by day, wrapping around her tongue to keep her free of dust.
There ought to be no promise left for someone with such a religion, because to them there is always hope
and how can you reason with an eternal optimist without falling into the light?

And this would seem illuminating but we all are, as the adage says, moth to a flame; so you see it goes so that
she is the brilliant center of gravity in this wide waste of the wild:
with whom there is unquestionable pain but
without whom there is no l i g h t.

She breathes life to the birds between my ribs, letting them while away
their time unaccountably — leaving no gamble to her design,
because when she is hungry she is starving and no slaughter is
sacrifice enough.

If I had told you I had no faith in your god,
would you think that I was a disbeliever?
Because I cannot kneel to something I cannot feel and
the weight of her legs on my shoulder when she twists my hair to knots,
it is the surest sign of a miracle, I have ever known.

But This Is What Goddesses Do.

They slip between your fingers and ravage the machine inside your chest, for a lack of a religious term she,
fucks with your wiring and despite such bold accusations you
enjoy the unfamiliarity and the nausea from the wine.
She dresses up for you like spring and keeps you warm until
next fall when you mourn for the corpse of your secret garden.

‘Never complain for having roses’, she says, ‘for religions that are born from a flare, all end ablaze
and when your faith, your body, and your mind has finally followed along then you too will see,
once time passes into history and history severs our hearts, that you and I were just a grand optimist’s delusion, set alight by the same religion of fire

but there are no phoenixes in this story,
just a faulty match of wiring left twitching in your chest.’