Try to capture
While clutching at your chest
A scrap or fragment
Of your hope, lost long ago
Blistering palms
And your knuckles pale, spectral
New death, born timid and
Companionless, hunting immunity

Everyone ceasing their quivering
A desperate and dying wish
Heartbreak to strangle complacency
And banish all prior dusks
Gasping lungs beg
For the fires to cauterize

You huddled in trenches
From the glare of derision
In the jaws of disfavor
Each a daughter of contempt
Who would unsheathe in vengeance
One thousand blades glinting
And bury all cycles of
Abuse, uneulogized

This the only promise
There will be no appeal
For your mercy
Sick with their pride
They will writhe in the gaze
Of their fathers
And howl, crushed by the
Weight of their misdeeds

No one ever mended
Nothing ever reconciled
So sings the choir

Boundless ruin will
Find your captors
Crescent in you, glittering torch of
Those disfigured, with fury renewed
Expel every deceit you swallowed
Choke not on their histories
But flourish
Breathing free air once again
You will undo their works
You will make cinders of their cities
Baring your teeth, wielding the
Weapons of refusal
Matching their violence