Galatea Honeycomb

by Jeanne Renee.

They used to bind the feet of women,
tightly, in white linen
like the corpses of Egyptian dead
because the bodies of their daughters
needed to be altered,
needed to be something men would wed.
Mothers knelt and kneaded them they’d wrought,
straining hands and fingers taut
and shaped love out of a little girl,
bending flesh and bone like warming wax.
None come in this world will last
to the rigor of their form unfurl.
Cords twine as webs down women’s backs
tightening distended flesh
in the bindings of a rich mans wife,
knowing life is short and hard to breathe
and girls are sold with enmity,
slack-jawed angels cut to match his tie,
beneath heavy-hearted casualties
bent by times insistency:
Change can only come from suffering.
Indiscretions mounting over time;
things taken that I thought were mine;
the heartache of our passing time is deafening.
They used to bind the feet of women,
it wasn’t their decision.
Humanity’s a hostile conversation.