The Patriarch’s Transaction 

Conditional love begets self-preservation.
Neither of these are love.

I used to hold my talents out
Like seashells in my palms
And watch him take them one by one,
Turn them in his hand and marvel
At the softness of their underbellies,
The pearlescent lavender of their skin.

I would smile and shake my head as I watched him
Bury them in the sand beneath his tent,
Knowing warmth and praise would follow.
And they did—like a rush of morphine, they did.

Then I would sift again
And claw and grasp at the sea 
For anything that caught the light,
That might just catch his eye—
My language of love, he’d said,
And I loved him with the urgency
Of death.

But when my talents ran dry and I returned
Empty-handed, I already knew
The frigid touch of the fingers that would grip me,
That would wrangle from my mouth
The secret shells I’d hidden
In the grotto of my body, the shells
I’d thought were only mine.

I used to let him pry them out one by one
Between coughs and gasps—
Acts of love, I would say
Through the spittle and the blood.
Then he would splatter them on the floor
By my hands and knees for me to gather and wash 
And gift them to him again:

This, that he might marvel at their tender shape 
And pour on me his love.