I moulder, no one sees,
I’m the maiden aunt,
the spinster sister whose
genesis will never be.

Her brothers found against
her trysting with Sichem,
so she pleaded to be left
a strumpet, but blades were
whetted, so she’d neither
bear nor rear, though she
was not the one to be cut.

Avenging her despoiling,
with swords and deceit,
they wasted the land of her
pursuer, and left her barren,
condemned an old-maid,
as she bore the guilt of
the slaughter of many.

She wrote her own requiem,
the empty-wombed one,
saying she’d rather have
been branded a whore, and
they prised from her fingers
the skin cut from Sichem,
the only link she retained.

I moulder, no one sees,
I’m the maiden aunt,
the spinster sister whose
genesis will never be.