Instructions on How to-

You coveted me for months—

an eternity in tides,

extracting each grain of sand

from under my fingernails.

Enamored by my skin—

the color of worn shoelaces.

Eyes—glassy, detached marbles.

Teeth—chipped shell fragments.

Slip the bag over my face.

Now: mammoth-brained,

waterlogged,

and drag me to the quarry—

the place beneath the tracks,

under the bridge,

where the garbled gallows

grow walls of vine

and send thunderous squalls

that upheave

and bury me—

beneath the dirt,

for the worms,

for the roots.

Then whisper my name.

Sing it to the wind—

Pipers in the trees.

Write it on the rest stop wall

where you abandon my car and my clothing—

then scratch it off with your bone snatchers.

And never reproach me—

remember, you asked me to be your goddess.

So I shall husk corn,

returned to the meadows of my ancestors—

forever a sleeping fossil

for your sacred reliquary

of conquests and mirrors.