Divinity

Divinity—we eat dried blueberries & rose petals
for lunch, rub aloe on the sores on our mouths.
You always dreamed of going to Versailles,
roleplaying Antoinette, minus the execution.
Had an obsession with the Sofia Coppola film,
where rock music was inserted into the narrative &
our protagonist, a young, thirteen-year-old girl,
eats vanilla cupcakes while dancing down
the Hall of Mirrors, the Baroque art quietly mocking
her existence. There’s nothing novel about dried
blueberries & rose petals. Our Momma bought the
blueberries on sale at the dollar store, called discovering
it an act of God as she hands it to us with memoirs written
by preachers. We eat rose petals as an act of teenage
rebellion. The sacrifice to our Persian ancestors,
who rolled the petals in their mouths & spat out poetry.
We sit in church, Rachel Ruysch’s still life bouquets
in our hands, the hues of pink and orange paint slicking
our hands with sin. Defiance. Evidence of the crime.
We regret nothing, stealing this art from those
who came before us. A queen destined to die must go
with bravery. We don’t fold our hands in prayer;
we smear the paint on our faces, as if
we, too, can be turned into art.

Header photograph © Bear Weaver.