She carries me, my soul.
My aching, tired bones wrapped in weathered skin 
that sheds and thins and fades like pages torn.

She will carry me along the curvature of the earth
until there is nothing left but my spine.
An infant in her infinite arms,
she swaddles me like the mother
I knew.

I am her, my soul, but I don’t know her, not entirely.
She has been bare breast and firm chest
with traits of Eve and Adam.

She has sailed over thousands of seas.
She killed and was killed and watched die,
so many.
She is both Lilith and Virgin Mother.

The apple and the worm,
to eat the sweetness of life and consume its sugars until rotten,
feeds the dirt only to return again, same soul.

I have only a time to learn her ways,
to reach out my hand and touch her face.
I will sail seas and die to become her.
My soul, my mother, me.