All the Ways You Know to Love Us ghazal for asa

by Andrea L. Watson

We are blaze you find such dangerous beauty —
One thousand jewels confined as dangerous beauty.

Veil us in raven–cloth.  Paint our windows jet.
For centuries defined: Danger is beauty.

Stone us, ask us to eat your fallen fruit:
Skin is opal rind of danger – etched beauty.

Beat us; brand us; bind our rubied feet.
Ancients declare our kind danger (if beauty).

O, cut out our tender lotus, moist pearl
On which you dined with danger as beauty.

Press us with rocks for two darkling moles;
Obsidian refined what danger owes beauty.

Carve our amber breasts.  Adorn us in radium.
Silver strands entwined — Danger us, beauty.

Array us in shrouds of sapphired weave:
Widow – cloth designed for danger in beauty.

Burn us with eternity husbands, onyx
Ash refined to danger . . . risk . . . beauty.

Pretend the sky is blind to dangerous beauty —
Sun’s topaz eye divined such dangerous beauty.