For those who don't die martyrs

I wrote a letter to my eight year old self today

to tell her scars only grow deeper with time.

She knows no evil but I tell her she is the seed-

her heart is a virgin forest but even the Holocaust sprung from a land

where there was once only grass. Her lover will one day

give her a hug but his fingers find a pressure point.

I tell her the landmine will be covered with sweet smelling flowers

but she will explode just the same. When they spy her corpse

they will be certain she just lied down from a nap.

Her bones already know this decay-

know that every step is a jump down the ravine- every step

just leading to the day when her tongue becomes two atoms smashing together

and her arms which she wanted to be windmills become machine guns.

I tell her that she is a darling girl, a good sweet nymph, but really

just an onion- who’s marauder will one day be sliced so guilty

she cannot hug her mother for fear of her arms becoming chains.

I tell my eight year old self she is a kamikaze, not a butterfly.

Her innocence is sweet and her naivety mockable

but really nothing is more tragic then

her ephemeral Futility.