seams and stitching ♡ published

FEAST OF GOLD

in ancient Colombia,
the native people
would paint their bodies in gold,
one night, every month.
they would gather
their precious gems
and metals and stones,
and visit an unassuming
body of water. there,
they would soak themselves
in the river water
and let their precious gems
and metals and stones
sink to the very bottom.
and they would wait
for their god
to return their riches back to them. and the miner men,
they built salt cathedrals
deep in the mines,
and they ate emeralds
when they were starved
and lonely and tired
of waiting for their riches.
they were silver savages.
violently posh,
bloody and gold,
shining in the light of salty tears
and silver-lined stomachs.
and their tongues were silver
with Spanish eloquence--
at least, that is true for the men.
the women, they bit
their dull, rusted tongues,
and their mouths flooded
with the metallic taste of blood.
metallic like silver,
like gems, and gold.
gold like their riches,
rusting at the bottom of the lake, metallic like the silver blood
flooding their mouths
when they did not speak.
their mouths, constructed
like their cathedrals
buried deep in their stomachs.
and they digested their riches,
and their precious gems,
like the murky belly
of that unassuming beast.
the miners starved,
crystal-toothed and metal-skinned,
in the mouth of their god,
eating up their salty
houses of worship.
the men, they wanted to go home.
to abandon their savagery
and recollect their riches.
to lick the gold off their skin
in rebellion against religion.
but their stomachs digested their emeralds, and their blood
dripped like crystallized rubies
and they starved in the mines.
and the women, they
tore out their tongues.
hungry for metal
and crystals and gold,
hungry for a god
and a god in a river.
and the murky water,
it went silver and bloody,
and the riches went rusted.
the men were left,
salted mummies in a mine
filled with bloody gems.
and the women,
without their bitten tongues
and husbands--they starved, too.
so they all came back to the river.
and they all swam
to the murky bottom,
strained for a glimpse
of a glittering jewel,
deep in the caves of the beast's belly. the gems digest in the stomach.
and the women went serpentine
as they silver-lined swam.
and the men crystallized
in luxurious savagery,
and their riches went rusted
at the bottom of the lake,
like a spoiled feast of gold
only a river god would eat.