The Price of Rain

The truth is that no man has taken anything

I didn’t give him. I mean, no man has taken

anything I claimed as my own. My body, my stink,

my land to plant in. It’s never been about the price

of lettuce. How many times have I taken something

that did not belong to me? Queen, queen, I croon,

pulling up handfuls of greens. My, my.

Property’s still theft. I let my wet skin slip

through the drainpipe. My mother says love,

in our family, means sacrifice. I thought,

if I lay my legs on the altar, I thought something

would come back to me. Mine, mine. I offered it,

being promised rain. Being told my wet was in

the common domain. I whispered, Our body, our legs,

our compost heap. I gave freely. I gave it for free,

thinking that made me wingèd–stork delivering herself

to herself. Look how free I am. Dowager Slut. Queen Regent.

Turns out, there are no synonyms for King. My lord,

my darling, my darkening sky. You can’t buy

a thunderstorm. Nor should you bring one back

from the dead. But I threw open the gates.

I invited them in. I said, Help yourselves. Then watched

as they went room to room, taking, emptying

the shelves, sucking marrow from the bones,

and overhead, the sky filled with rain.

Source: Soft Science (Alice James Books, www.alicejamesbooks.org, 2019)