they don't grow up wanting to be martyrs, these soft venuses
yet the wind catches their hair a certain way, a tree looks back at them a certain way,
and they run to chase phantasms, losing their way through the tall grass and the sound of their own heavy breathing in their ears drowning out everything but a body-machine hum

they didn't want to be bowing to someone or something,
disparate ideas on morality and charity and soft rotting sacrifice
but because they come in skin and with a peculiar affinity for love and atonement compulsions
taught while halfway on their knees already that mind's sacrifice is the condition of thinking about clouds too much and their habit of chasing beauty, trying to pry it open wide in order to bask in the glow
and for their whimsy, they will never stop
cause and effect, so sweetly curious as to the former that the latter comes only in middle age when they remember to get angry

they didn't grow up,
rosy plump scabbed knees and they never had to catch what they ran after, to find that by the time they caught up with it and peeled it away to a core they were too tired and empty to care much that it's all a matter of
husks

she won't be bowing to anyone, no making amends to pretty shells
simply, only really but most importantly because;

she is not guilty
and i have no patience to chase