The Pardon

Our prayers of narrow hope unfurl
Like sudden petals. 
Captive to a tab of ground
The body opens itself, gives
Itself in supplication, 
Delicate, 
Specific
To reprieve.
Why bees crawl blindly back and forth
Within the cell
Ignoring the inflorescence, 
The window ledge 
Furring with agonies of thirst,
When they could fly away
Could flout
The iron bars, 
Aggrieves us, troubles our pleas
For freedom 
As unfettered movement
As the choice to come and go
As will 
Or won’t.
Why won’t 
They drink and save themselves?
What warped order does the queen give?
No one can hear our blooms over the buzzing sound 
That is the warden as he whets
The chosen means of justice.
We long to set the garden right.
We cherish a supreme
Power
Whose flayed sky brims
With an appeal. 
But the birds
Who come to lap the nectar
Of the body’s sorrow, 
Taste its prayers, 
Feast
Upon its worms, are not the godsent
Answer that we seek.

This article appears in November 2025.