I'm not saying I'm replacing love
for some other word.
To describe the tie that bound me to you.
I'm just saying we've mistaken one
for thousands of words.

Woman-girl Jezebel protégé,
you came with wide eyes
of hardened stone.
Heathen spirits have raped
your spirit and relished in
the bloody malay.

You call God's holiest men
hypocrites:
men who burn their fingers
with candles they use
to light our way.

I'm not saying love's a plaything.
No, it's a powerful word.

I gave you no promises, yet
I still surrendered my conscience
and you accepted my white flag
with a half-smirk and a cat's eye.

If there is a light of God,
then he blights all hypocrites.
He takes their made-up wounds
and forever pricks.

You say you suffer in the name
of truth and justice.
I say you like how the brimstone
highlights the contours of your face.

I know that your feelings are tender.
I know inside you embers still glow.

We watch. Because, like a carriage
tumbled and ablaze,
you are too tragic to avoid.

I want to say I care and
that you matter. I
want to say that my heart carved
a haven for you to reside.

But no.

In your Children's Crusade, you led
a town into outstretched arms of
lust and anger and all the sins
they warned you about in Sunday School

So with this, Abigail, I bid you
good riddance. Let the legends of
your whoredom scatter and dissolve.
We will be all the better.

01/31/2001

Author's Note: Italicized lines are from "Jezebel" by 10,000 Maniacs. Written in response to The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

Posted on 07/04/2007
Copyright © 2024 Ashley Lane