Breakfast With Inanna

for those I miss

I sat with Inanna one morning,
and she bled red and black on to the table cloth.
I told her not to worry about it,
                ruined now from her trails.
And she said with a nail-gouged tongue
                clear as the sky
“What is there to worry about?”

Shamed, naked, I poured her more coffee.
“I called you to ask a question…
how do you live with your sister so far away?”

Her eyes burned bight as the sun
and she set her mug down,
                leaving a ring of brown.
Removed her crown and lapis earrings
                she cracked her knuckles
And with the surest and simplest of motions
She ripped out my heart.

She set it upon the table,
                more red, more brown, more black
and it still beats there
                this is a power of all Goddesses
                              to continue the human heart
Pumping away as if it has been there forever

I gasped. I flailed. I spilt coffee and blood.

I hurt and it was unbearable.
It was all hot tears and violent jack-knifing of limbs
I could see only Inanna,
I could see only Ereškigal.
I could feel only that space where she use to be.

“There.
That is how you live with your sister not next to you.
You breathe with shallow breaths.
Your limps will grasp at empty air to find her.
Your ears will only hear the blood
                that use to be where she was.
That is how you will live.”

I fell backward
                on to the floor, the earth.
Attempts were made to grasp at life
                my fingers holding only dirt

“And you will only be still until she puts your there 

Right under your fingernails; her dirt
Right through that space she made in your heart;
her hook; her nail; her spike.”

And finally I stopped
                it all stopped.
“Silence is your sister; is my sister.
She is a far away as we chose.”

[2011]