Give me his head to hold,
to watch quietly the grooves of my palm
run red with his demise. I welcome
the warmth of the golden cross,
the hilt you grasped heartbeats ago,
a blade you gave him
to swallow

for the grunts he breathed upon you,
and the limbs,
warm and slick with drink, with feast, with you
beneath him,

Place upon my shoulders that weight
of the broadsword
that plunged through air
thickened with silence,
the piercing cry of a woman,
pinned down
his throat to the bed,
and began the drain, winking silver promised
to rust where splattered
with the hue of life extinguished.


Unweave yourself from him—
I’ll cleanse your fingers
from his scalp of soaked curls
and mend them when rended by cords.
I’ll silence these hissing sheets, incriminating
like a canvas, and do not fall back
into that shroud of gloom, chiaroscuro respiring
at your neck in true baroque death,

and when we flee his tent, this camp,
give me his head to hold;
by the rouged shadows of my azure skirts,
I want the stars to see you
freed of him.