La Victoria is curling fetal in the corner,
rusty skin peeling away in flakes.
Red rusty cheeks and red rusty lips
carve out words from dead air, silent,
the breath knocked from her dried up bosom
to come to a rest a stinking haze at our feet.
We are insane with revulsion.
We saw her sipping the sky.
We saw her sucking the sap of the severed limbs
torn by the storm from the trunks of the trees, bare
husks, dead ends unmantled even in bark
stretching hopeless toward a perfect gradient
cyan to marine
rosy cosy
dusk to dark, utter night, no stars.
Her confidence leaked from the corners of her lips
and dribbled down her chin.
Then the trees began to hiss. She could not make them stop.
The noise has teeth.
This is not the wettened, supple beauty she promised us.
We are so disappointed.
We cannot hear. We cannot go home.
She is mouthing metaphors and letting her hands flutter.
Her hands are dying birds.
She is begging us for water.
We will tear her limb from limb.