Saint Barbara

There’s a salt mine here,
under Detroit,
twelve hundred feet beneath the Ford Theater
and its red velvet seat cushions.
At the bottom is a shrine to Barbara—
the patron saint of miners.

It’s been two years since we broke up
but I still daydream sometimes
about walling you in down there,
burying you alive
under her robed, porcelain figure,
where true men would walk by every day
and not know you’re encased there.

Let the mine collapse around you,
great boulders falling from fifty floors above,
dust without light to make it glitter.
Let the chute fill with hydrogen sulfide,
the men’s eyes tearing up,
alarms and supervisors blaring,
elevators crushed with people.

Let Barbara save everyone but you.