No one presided.
Alone, suspended
in a state of tremulous hyperclarity,
unable to decompose
or in any sense "go away,"
she who had pervaded all things
shivered, flattening herself
into two dimensions to float
like a hypothetical bridal veil
flickering inside the opalescent dream
of a spirit who has slept through
a richly candled seance in which the dead
strain to invoke the living.
But because she was
that lightness inside the heaviness
which every soul most craves,
she found herself swiftly, violently torn,
as if sliced into infinitesimal scraps
by the narrowest shard
of a shattered, half-silvered prism.
Of course, the pieces were distributed
equally.
The queen of heaven in shreds,
and no one satisfied!
This was the way it would be
for a very long time.

*************** Claire Bateman Copyright 1998