Dear Gilbert

(In the voice of Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797)

What the living do is die; what the lonely do is love.
God took your words, my dear, and poured them over broken glass.

You think the earth is planted in your name over and over.
Well,
I think the world is broken
and my name seals the open veins.

The clothes of this world are our words. God made us in body

and then left us to our own
to clothe ourselves.

Our language is what we wear, the stories of the world.

Gilbert, you can not steal my cloak.