Woman Pursued by Dragon Flees Into Desert
Window in La Sainte Chapelle, Paris
She’d always loved the word
‘immaculate’, until they explained.
Even after Gabriel, it wasn’t clear
this was a permanent commitment.
Not just a virgin but The Virgin.
The hydra-headed dragon
came to her door at night.
She smelled corruption on its breath
and pitied it, its skin scored
with self-loathing,
its terrible amour with death.
She looked it in the eyes, saw
herself: a tinselled effigy;
her Eternal Life sentence,
a juggernaut of pain and terror.
She ran out of the town,
into the clean silence of the desert.
How many desperate decades of the rosary
reeled backwards to her then;
countless pleas for intercession.
She saw she was to star in a
two-thousand year long tragedy,
a non-speaking part.
But the allure, that trap,
of making all the difference.
And though the khamsin whispered
tears... miracles… make nothing happen,
she stopped running. Across the sand
the creature crawled to drag her into history.
‘immaculate’, until they explained.
Even after Gabriel, it wasn’t clear
this was a permanent commitment.
Not just a virgin but The Virgin.
The hydra-headed dragon
came to her door at night.
She smelled corruption on its breath
and pitied it, its skin scored
with self-loathing,
its terrible amour with death.
She looked it in the eyes, saw
herself: a tinselled effigy;
her Eternal Life sentence,
a juggernaut of pain and terror.
She ran out of the town,
into the clean silence of the desert.
How many desperate decades of the rosary
reeled backwards to her then;
countless pleas for intercession.
She saw she was to star in a
two-thousand year long tragedy,
a non-speaking part.
But the allure, that trap,
of making all the difference.
And though the khamsin whispered
tears... miracles… make nothing happen,
she stopped running. Across the sand
the creature crawled to drag her into history.
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