MAUREEN SEATON

Sex & Petroglyphs

Once, when the volcanoes threw ash too far and the people had carved the cold, it was like war had happened backwards. You petrified me with your funny little hat and your short skirt. 

Sometimes I’d come home and there’d be nothing on TV. Those were dark times made of bones and litigation. Of phenomenalism (the theory that all existence is calcified and litigious).

From there we plucked the space between ethics, a wicked sticky clench of a place never before explored or expunged, although we both expatriated. You can see where I’m going with this.

I wasn’t supposed to notice the way everyone in the stained glass turned to look at me. I began to think: I could. I could actually have married a priest. Or a pirate.

Don’t say the ways we kill and heal each other crawl around like sex inside us.

Say: I am soon to appear before you with a golden crown.