A stone is an eye, a reminder that god
sees us. The day we left my father’s house,
I woke to pain and blood on the bed sheets.

I woke to the stare of a tiny woman
carved from stone. When I was a child,
I held her cold chest to my chest,

bleeding heart and knot of painted
fabric. She spoke through my sleep:
a snake’s tongue sliding into my ear.

I believe she understood this pain, this burning
stone inside me. We left my father’s house
and his voice followed us to the water:

why did you steal my gods? In my dreams,
I walk away from home until my foot
hovers just above the river’s silver

skin. Why should the gods belong to him?
My father’s voice bit at my heels that day,
and the blue lady called me by my name.

Faith sang like rain falling at my feet.
I wanted to see the face of god. I wanted
to hold a cold stone against my chest.

My father’s voice catches me like a dead
man’s hand from a grave. This carved face
the size of my thumb, this stone is a reminder

that god sees us. Why did you steal my gods?
My blood has no voice. When pain returns,
when my body tightens like a fist, I want god

to know my affliction: these deities I’ve birthed,
these gods pulled from my legs, these idols, these images.
My father cries into the night, his tongue a bell of shadow.

The gods will not belong to the dead. Sound
is dead to water. Sound is dead to stone.
My foot throws the river’s silver skin into madness.