stargazer woman

By Camille Bull

when you stab

the center of a lily,

how many years will you grieve it?

as it sits in the kicked-up dirt

of your muddy boots, suffocates

and spoils in your 

angry light of a blood-red sun; 

won’t you feel the guilt?

stab a woman with every flower you pick,

but you will only feel more homesick.

its purity and kindness,

now open and bleeding.

never to yell, scream, 

or punch back,

but to use the fall,

use the blood, hurt, 

and loss

as a song to sing to the night sky.

you beg the same sky to name you savior

yet so easily you neglect my favor.

when you rip the purity

and kindness from

a woman of earth

do not tell her

to stay in at night,

for she is called

by the moon

and like the tide,

she must obey her mother’s wish.

though her little sister in soil 

has no will to fight, 

a woman of earth will laugh,

kick, and claw 

as you beg for control.

it must be easy to find luck in a Power

that has no faith in a flower.

above the ground, with hands 

and petals, bellies and stems,

she keeps an immortal beauty 

from the obedience of the betrayal.

though the cycle will continue, 

may there now be few.