The Letters

With quill and silver knife
She carved a poison pen
Wrote to her lover’s wife:
“Your husband’s seed has fed my flesh”.

As if a leper’s face
That tainted letter graced
The wife with choke-stone throat
Ran to the day with tear-blind eyes.

Impaled on nails of ice
And raked with emerald fire
The wife with soul of snow
With steady hands begins to write:

“I’m still, I need no life
To serve on boys and men
What’s mine was yours is dead
I take my leave of mortal flesh”.