Writhing from a shell-
She’s spit!

naked and afraid, dumb and blank- 

already the air is just too cold. 

Fate- 
or here,
spitting sucking snakes whose

coiling gestures, 

“She be here” ?

Is it in these moments 

we are infantilized by the great black mouth-

Her hornets nest, 
brutish in the eye

a wail to recompense 

Life, the First Offender? 

Is it in this moment 

her red meat is made to bite the arrowhead?
Is it in this moment
she was made Janus and given 

two irreconcilable heads?

Is this the first and last moment, she’d ever think,

“I would be better off dead?"

Or this,
the day that Artemis was made to wed?

or Is it this cataclysm- 

the sea’s rough and tender edge 

that's given her

cause 

and 

shell to shed?