Kaitlyn Gaffney is a north Jersey poet and senior Writing major at Rowan University. She serves as a poetry editor for Glassworks Magazine. Her work is published in Avant Literary Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, and forthcoming in Gone Lawn. She has produced two original plays through Rowan.

Hakeldama

i am six and i want to siphon the colors
from the stained-glass hymns that

elude me. bathe in them and emerge
whole. candied. reverent. i want to

gnaw at the pages of scripture and
feel them melt on my tongue. i want

the cobweb in the corner by my mother’s
shoe and i want to ask the spider if they

have anyone to forgive. the cloth of the
pew itches and i want to stop it – to stop

the itch.

i am twenty-one and i imbibe wine like i
will find Calvary at the bottom of a chalice.

i am rot and puncture wound. i am lacerated
still. i know nothing of want, of orison. i am

the necrosis of creed in the hands of a
skeptic. i bathe in a field of blood and emerge

truth. the silver pieces singe my pocket
and i scratch at my thighs – i scratch

until they bleed.