Game

I thought we were playing a game

in a forest that day.

I ran as my mother chased me.

But she’d been stung by a bee.

Or bitten by a snake.

She shouted my name, which

even as a child I knew was not

“Stop. Please. I’m dying.”

I ran deeper

into the bright black trees

happily

as she chased me: How

lovely the little bits and pieces.

The fingernails, the teeth. Even

the bombed cathedrals

being built inside of me.

How sweet

the eye socket. The spine. The

curious, distant possibility that God

had given courage

to human beings

that we might

suffer a little longer.

And by the time

I was willing to admit that

all along

all along

I’d known it was no game

I was a grown woman, turning

back, too late.