Have You Ever Knelt Beneath a Woman?

Published in After the Pause March 2022

Have you ever knelt beneath a woman, 

your knees dipping into the silt of the lake

pressing, indenting their own craters, 

a hushed moonlanding into the sand’s soft give

slick with the algae of another life? 

Would you wash her feet in the leachy water, not because Jesus did

but because you want to.

You want to hold in your hand something as tender and curved as the newborn baby 

you reckon you’ll never have, 

never cradle like this.

Was there firelight?

Or did the burn come from her,

the look she gave you when you pressed your lips to the center of her arch,

chilled and wet from the miracles of nightbreeze and splash and want.

Goddamn perfect

Goddamn holy