There is no name for women like her

In the depths of a mineral mountain

there is a mother with

blood on her hands

and a stone casket upon a daiis,

under the moon of a virgin queen.

Under the scar of failing flesh,

she buries the missing pieces

of a child she loved like silk.

Satin blindfolds rub the temples 

of the magic-blood goddess, her

feral, gnashing teeth hidden 

behind the ruby lips of temperance.

Somewhere on the other side

of a raging blue-green ocean,

the gushing of her son’s jugular vein

left a stain the size of womb-water

on the cobblestones of a foreign city.

Temperance is toeing the spider-thread line 

between walking into the ocean

with millstones around your wrists

and climbing to the top of an

obsidian mountain, soles sliding

through the igneous ash.

Under the lightscreen,

under the scrying pool,

under the moonlight screams,

a child sleeps forever

in a sanctum of mourning,

watching with glass-blown eyes

as the children of other mothers

walk barefoot into the sea.