Cain’s Wife On The Fifth Day Of Rain

The scar on your cheek
gleams like the spine of a fish.
When I touch it,
it swims away.

The floodwater reflects
heaven at night:
black, still,
silent with bones.

In the morning worms rise
slick from the earth.
They haven’t seen the sun
since you drove your brother’s name
into dirt.

Now all that grows
from the garden’s rot
is mold and mildew—
hissing through the rain.

I wake to you shaking:
a mouth full of thunder—
screaming Abel, Abel, Abel
as if the word were a seed—

so I plant it.

I bury the name
in my palm,
and under darkness—
press it
to earth’s drenched mouth
as her mud hums beneath me.

The next day it spreads
thin white veins—
threading the dirt
with rivers of milk.

It breaches the muck,
unfolding pale gills.

God says nothing in response.

So I name it.

When you ask me what I’ve done,
I tell you:
I grew this mushroom
out of rain.

You laugh,
or maybe cry—
I can’t tell in this weather.

All I know is you crack the sky
with your sound—
and God turns.

You look at me,
shaking.

My lips trace your scar:

if God wanted silence,
He shouldn’t have made soil
sing when it drinks.