I. Dante Alighieri

Easter, and the city held its breath.
A promise slipped its ring, then slipped again.
One look—no thunder, just a human oath—
and Florence passed the error on to men.
They waited where the god of war looks down,
stone eyes reflecting iron as it rose.
The boy was hardly blood before the crown
of houses split, each sworn against its close.
They said it was a woman, or her face,
or honor bruised beyond a clean repair.
I said the fault was men undone by grace,
misapplied to what it will not spare.
Love marked the act before the plan.
The knife remembers better than the hand.

II. Marcus Brutus

You tell it straight, yet leave out how it feels.
How something in the room begins to lean
toward action, how restraint itself congeals
into a dare no virtue has kept clean.
They spoke of Rome as if it were a child
we had to save by cutting out its heart.
I read the signs. I knew the crowd would smile.
I knew the blade before I knew my part.
Still, I was seized—pressed to my role,
as if delay were treason, breath a lie.
When steel went in, the world went oddly whole,
then shattered under one familiar cry.
You hear a curse. I hear a rising flood.
Finish it. History remands us back to blood.

III. Cassius Longinus

They dragged Lucretia in, hands slick with blood,
the crowd already swelling like a flood.
A man struck wood; the blow broke loose a cry:
her limbs lay wrong, arranged to look near whole.
Her father’s hand was steady in the lie,
turned chin to light, fixed posture to the role.
Men pressed the pit, each hungry for his part,
their teeth bared wide, rehearsing how to smile.
Watch her throat—the hammer in your heart
gone thin and quiet. Listen like a child
who finds a cut and works it clean:
the shouts will harden as your wound congeals.
You did not turn away. I saw you lean
your body into his; you learned how pressure feels.

IV. Julius Caesar

You think your stroke was guided by another hand,
as if the blade had entered by design or plan.
My body was no gift for you to spare—
I lay beneath your knives; you named it grace.
Junius did not wait to plead repair;
he lifted Rome by stripping Tarquin’s face.
A body in the square draws nations close;
a wound displayed will loosen any crown.
From Lucretia’s blood the first Republic rose;
from mine that ancient fury surges down.
You were not tempered by the tongues of men;
you stood within a house that swore its oath.
What once unseated kings returns again.
I hear that ancient measure in your breath.

V. Lucretia Tricipitina

Steel cools, yet rests a moment in the hand.
A wounded body ripens into oath.
They bless the wound and choose to call it grace.
A fallen weight decides who wears the crown.
What breaks in light keeps turning in the blood.
The square gives way beneath a rising flood.