October 2026

I am still waiting.

Excavate with a soft brush,

and look—

I was chosen by lot, ripe fruit

on my mother’s fig tree diminishing

as I was drawn away.

In Knossos, a crowd roared at my arrival.

Cresting a conflagration of voices,

the guards shut me in.

Inside, black horns, human muscle,

smell of hot olive oil and leather.

He was, after all, half man.

A gambler’s choice—

I placed my hand gently in the dip

between his hip bone and thigh.

He brought offerings of strange meat,

traced strands of my hair as they shone

against his skin, under his lamp.

Until I opened my eyes

to a spreading cloak of red, a blade, and faces—

“Kill her too!”

The leering mouth passed

a different sentence on me—

“No, we’ll leave her.”

And they turned and filed out,

threading starlight through their hands.

I could not staunch the blood.

Its sticky dust adheres to every line on my palm

and mixes with dust from the walls

in a thick paste under my fingernails.

The faithful face is more bovine in death.

There is no way out—for me—

and it is dark since the lamp died.

Patience is my bright thread.

I choose

to wait.