the goddess realm

I was lying on the table with my needles in and then I was on a different table.

With another body I open my eyes onto a woman's face as she leans over me, glinting headpiece, naked breasts under a veil of hair.

With a single solemn and deft stroke she cuts me open from neck to navel.

There is a waste basin on the floor and she sets to work removing a whole lot of black oozing matter into it, reaching inside me with her hands

and gently working around my organs, pouring water from a large ceramic pitcher and skimming off the polluted humors.

I breathe slowly, trying to help her in this work, pushing the poisons that had seeped their way into my heart and lungs,

up and out toward the opening. She works silently, deftly. The feeling is a deep breath suspended at the moment of fullness,

the great rush of air when a set of double doors is flung open and light, wind, energy, motion suddenly penetrate

the stillness of long closed rooms, an excavated tomb. I catch a glimpse of the band of her richly embroidered high waisted skirt,

and I know where I am, the memorious stone of the table, the headpiece, the bare chest.

The world of the temple, the sacred pool, the spider’s bite, the ancient song, the wide brimmed goddesses, the libidinal chambers.