This vivid poem by Carolina Ebeid has been haunting me since I read it earlier this year.
“Albeit”
Because I have wanted
to make you something
beautiful, I borrowed
a book on how to keep
a bee-hive made of glass.
An observatory
of translucent arteries
lit with wing-gossip.
An allegory for the soul.
Though what do I understand
of beauty that thrives
in a place of exile.
(Bees can anger so.
A grist of killers has swarmed
a boy beneath the windowsill.)
You said the soul-to-be.
Vegetables flower
outside. Squash-blossoms.
& for what is that
an allegory?
We live in a copy
of Eden, a copy
that depends on violence.
live in the layers 