Twist Of My Tears Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Death
stared down
with dead eyes
from the scaffold,
hanging in a twist.
We marched by in silence,
wrapped in the stench of burnt flesh,
swallowing the grief in our hearts.
I remember her white-throated grace,
tightly drawn, as the rain slid off her tongue.

Through the unguarded window of my mind,
I creep out in the middle of night,
stretching my shadow across her,
covering her nakedness
with a gown of pure silk -
spun from sacred cries
and fastened with
a blue twist
of my
tears.