I was buried beside an olive tree

with a lamp, three figs, and a loaf of bread.

I was never a mother, nor a wife,

my duties conferred to the sacred flame

to attend the vestal hearth in winter,

to bless the Tiber’s water with my palms,

 

and then relieve the burning in my palms.

The Sacred Way is just beyond this tree,

where my lovers visit every winter

to share my memory with leavened bread

and hold their blackened fingers to a flame.

I was never destined to be a wife—

 

They knew they could not claim me as a wife:

the random lots were held against my palms

and made my fingers curl into a flame

then open as a blossom on the tree.

My mother wept; my father gave me bread.

We walked to an empty house in winter

 

just beyond the Sacred Way that winter,

my dowry paid in full– not as a wife

but rather as a holy child, whose bread

had crumbled to ashes in her palms;

I watched my father pass beneath the olive tree

bending low, as a hand cupped to a flame,

 

his body disappearing as a flame.

All the days of my twentieth winter

were marked through every season on this tree:

removed from vagaries of man and wife,

I rubbed its soothing oil between my palms

and gazed from windows when we made the bread,

 

as I crushed the grain into flour for bread.

I pressed bellows, bearing the oven’s flame

to watch the bodies grow between my palms,

rising from dust, then hardening in winter.

I was never destined to be a wife;

to be embraced by lovers near this tree

 

or kiss their palms, which hold the leavened bread

before an olive tree; or lift a flame

to see their winter eyes expect a wife.