BY: Aaliyah Dickey
Pietro Novelli, featured in The Scottish National Gallery, honors the first death;
a murder.
Cain raised a clenched fist to murmur:
Don’t you know sacrifices decide your worth?
Scarlet stained the tended Earth—
Look where your effulgence brought you.
Look where your righteousness led you.
Is it jealousy that you reap in the fields you grew?
Hatred builds from the ground up, Cain.
Planted from a seed to be your crop,
To let your hatred be tainted by grain.
You don’t know the bitter taste of betrayal.
I’m not one to weep when washing away the remnants—
Where is your shepherd, Abel?
And neither were you.
Glory is a price we pay;
You’re above me by striking me down, brother.
Will you take care of my sheep the same way you cared for me?
Mother and father took a bite of the one thing they couldn’t have.
Did you think I’d be any different?
I didn’t plant my hate and let it fester and simmer.
I didn’t imagine your eyes when I slaughtered
the bleating lamb,
I didn’t pretend your blood and his were interchangeable.
You are not the Lord but—
I revered you.
Even as I hold my hand to your chest,
As flesh tears and bone splinters,
I revered you.