Thick as Blood by Melissa Chappell
It began when the center of the world
caught fire with a spark,
and Notre Dame burned down to her bones.
It began when the center of the world
caught fire with a spark,
and Notre Dame burned down to her bones.
Still, her wounds smoulder
when the rain falls thick as blood
           on the paper obelisk,
charred, cindered, yet its
blackened stains strain
to name the craven miscreants
who flee as the rain falls thick as blood
           upon us, two spires,
water running between our bodies,
bare, bone on bone.
I wash the ashes from you in the soaking rain,
bathing the wounds of
the engulfed, raging world,
raging, as the rain falls thick as blood
           drenching a man
with an AK-47 standing on the courthouse steps.
We await the minute when
bullets blaze a trail through air,
splitting raindrops,
splitting time,
splitting bodies
as the rain that falls thick as blood
           over us two spires.
For a singular moment we will be
the center of the world,
stealing a fistful of the holy,
washed clean,
spyring, uncharred,
scraping the firmament
so that redemption falls like rain,
flooding our hungering cities,
absconding with
the brittle shame,
thick as thieves,
thick as blood.
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