I.S. Jones

Aubade

(In the voice of Cain, to her sister Abel)

Is it harder to believe I built a heaven for you
or that I would send you there with my bare hands?

A starless night made dizzy by palm wine,
the smell of sleep.

All around us, the fields illumined by fireflies:
lanterns over the dark’s altar.

A sister is the only offering for the hungry god
in me. I can’t hold it back anymore, Abel:

you make the softest animal. Now I set you free.
Resistance: a body tumbles into wet grass

& struggles despite my nurture. There, there now.
You’re so quiet, you’re almost tomorrow.

My hands about your neck is my final lesson in mercy.
It all spills out: years of unbridled tension filed down

to a single red promise. Silence: you are complete.
Your living has humiliated me long enough.

I reach into the heaven of your mouth, wretch a star
from the sky. Your rot and cinder and bark now in me.

You are perfect here: your broken neck in the crook
of my own. How I’d wrap you in my shawl and sing

while the fireflies converge. See? I made it all better.
I opened the soil for you. I know this wisdom,

how to keep my possessions in their purest form:
underground.