A Plea from Sodom and Gomorrah
Please return to pain and bruising, not scars
With numbness in the tissue. Trauma gives
A certainty at least. Those dense armoires
Of pale cicatrice commemoratives
Might be, you think, better than current harms
That sting, then ache, but frankly I prefer
The slaps you dealt (by withholding your arms)
To memories in frankincense and myrrh.
I suggest you wait a while between the hurts
You give me so that I’ll be unprepared
When you deliver them. That way the spurts
Of agony will reign. I won’t be spared.
Be my lord, triple-crowned, who tortures, not
One deadening me, the salt wife of Lot.