Qaemot for What Would Make Us Planets
Bloody too the planets, how they
aligned that dead of day, the first
of my marriage, bloody the precision
a friend scrawled into a table
cloth of our solar system —
Yes — absolutely, bloody
that, upon checking later,
it was correct, all that
:: data ::
& algorithms,
Mercury to Neptune
to dwarf planets
still orbiting the sun
the august you & I buried them along
with Kiddush cup
& plate & vows,
the glass
he trampled on,
& the long,
long marriage
tallit the rabbi herself
had wrapped he & me in — bloody, still too,
the docile hooves
of my near bare
shoulders, covered in a finely netted
mantilla —
for how — it — preys,
the Ketubah
I alone penned
knowing it would never hold up
in rabbinical court — bloody it was invalid
the day I married him,
filled with vows
of only love & no legal
:: tender :: — & bloody
that day of so much burying,
you traced a broken
tree, nearly split
in half & I
didn’t know right
away was dead
as the promise I made
to the rabbi in you alone
must do the digging
for the burden & strength it will take
from you to do the leaving —
& bloody this, my
confession: that it was you who severed
what thick, unyielding roots
got in our way
of the hole we made
out of soft, reddish under-
earth graced
with hard
stones
deep &
protected
from lightning
that must’ve struck
the tree as my body
so thin &
dying
& ever ill-
equipped, my flimsy
sundress with a high-
cut slit & your hands
rubbing my legs
with insect
repellent — yes, bloody this, the more
we buried, the smaller
things
became,
the tick
trying
to bloody into me
& off my skin you pinched
as I read the V’ahavta
now :: orbit
-less
but in motion,
I suppose, the way
an electron smears
like a cloud
around its
atom, that
so elementary & unseen
spark-smudge
everywhere
at once.
Bloody this, I think.
Bloody how it twists over vast
separations,
burying
what weight
would make us
planets.
