–Hospital de los Venerables, Sevilla
She stares with a bearing – experience
having brought her soul this far –
and lifts a frond, one kind
of sword, in one hand, effortless.
In the other, clutched to her,
the silver plated sword
of her own beheading. A delicate
crown perches at the back
of that head, jaunty as a hair pin,
but in her face is her ferocity.
This piety is no matter
of two eyes to heaven,
as with one eye she gazes past us
towards her future harrowing
with a steady stare that stops
our breathing in this darkened
room built for dying clerics.
We have nothing to tell her.