Immured

They have papered the wall in parchment
the color of old skin, but there are glints
light, of reddish hues in the pigment.

The cat sits patient, resigned, aloof
to our plight. There will be time
to yowl and howl
under a full moon
to silken glide
through wild fields and meadows.

But not for us.

They’ve varnished a dark wooden bar
measured to cut us in half, to mark
the forbidden, the marred, they
want shadowed and walled away.

Brick by tawny brick etched with the rigid glyph
of the fantasy of our sex—our griffin stain
of monthly burnished blood betrays us—the wall
rises from our knees to our thighs to our waist
pressed like dull moths on parchment dusty with dead voices
lest we fly on eagle wings to rake their flesh
with lioness fangs and raptor talons.