Gold

The Queen of Sheba fell,

Well, she dove, really, for pearls.

She dove down past caring what would happen to her after,

What we would say about her centuries later,

How she was seduced, how she was a fool.

The best of us know that, to become gold, we first have to burn.

Gold is soft, it can be marked with a finger.

Most of what surrounds it is extra.

To make it beautiful, it has to be burned.

This is the thought that wakes me up when I've dropped off with my head in one of my master's books,

Do I have the courage to burn?

The writing in these books is more like dreams than words,

Flecks and spirals twisting on and over each other like the lights behind my eyes when I've read too long.

If I am to become something,

To become something other than this,

I must not notice when my eyes are tired.

I must understand that they look down at this leather and ink now so they can look at the stars forever.

Do I have the courage to burn?

When all of this is said and done,

Can I peel away the layers of me that do not deserve eternity?

Can I sacrifice the tiny voice that worries what I will be called?

The pulses in my heart that tell me that I have missed the best of everything,

No man will look at me,

Burns on my hands from learning the mysteries up close.

I never even got to hold my sister's child,

My own is an imagining,

An ache at the back of my head that I ignore,

But can't bring myself to consign to the fire.

Can I pull apart the place in my soul that wants God to live between the nave and the apse and stay there?

In the middle of the night,

When my master has gone to sleep (he is allowed to sleep),

I wonder what else will have to burn?

Will I have to cut away the layer where my heart skips a beat at the sight of the rising sun?

The part that used to wander in the woods, rubbed herbs between my fingers just for their fragrance, before I learned their uses.

Will my laughter have to die?

I know how loud it is.

When the mixture of me has simmered and boiled over,

There may be precious little left to live forever.