A Letter to Mata Hari, Dead at 41

cierra lowe

I can envision your pilot,

roiling within his apartment that

mourning—despicably

frying eggs and renouncing

your conception. As if

your essence was merely insult

to his injury.

I bet you were born on Rosh Hashanah.

I bet you used a rib as a hatpin.

I bet that those twelve barrels seemed a curious affection

as they peered upon you—

and so you blew a kiss

to the firing squad.

You were made deaf by

God’s silence.

It was bullets that made love to

your body for the last time.

They say you wore white gloves.

They say you kept your face to the sky.

As blood wept from your abdomen,

it gathered around you like still-blind

offspring, hungry for its mother.

You were 41—with legs curled

beneath you like an impossible

chair—when you fatally birthed

the first Rorschach test: to France,

it looked like moral ambiguity.

To Maslov, it looked like insubordination.

To your creator, it looked like spilled ink.