Wonder Woman

for Charleena Lyles

There’s a hole where the child was.
Great big hole- twinkling embers inside with
howling sounds flying between the walls of your chest.
Indigo smoke in the shape of the last magnolias is pouring
from you.
Your eyes meet morning’s hard blues and shallow, melon
beams.
Those beams are stretching against the city.
Fire touching your gut
where the child was.
The Moon sees your writhing, your children fleeing the metal assault
before she zips away into light.
But you cannot die, daughter of Hippolyta.
You cannot mourn in the cool thicket of willows with
plaited hair.
You cannot go without defense; your dominion is over the trees,
hands and cannons on this bulbous planet scorched with indifference.
a woman with two knives
You did not die.
There are tea candles on the sidewalk,
rings of them marking the wound,
marking your ascent into a cloudless place ahead.

© The Iron Sister