Today, March 13th, is my name day, along with all girls
named for Christina. In Poland, my father told me,
the streets were flooded with daffodils
for the other Krysias.

In her honor, I consider how the tongue was cut
from her mouth before she was executed. I imagine
a street-side barber on house call, razor blades, rapiers,
a tiny guillotine, rusted knife. The severed tongue
lies on the floor like a slug, and she is sodden.
Her father first tried to drown her,
tying stones around her neck.

I don’t attend church, but last year at my grandmother’s
funeral I genuflected before the altar—that slab
on which I still autopsy my body from time to time
and find it besmirched: bare, queer, full of desire
for myself. In mass, I fought back, toying with how best
to insert Tom Waits lyrics into Ecclesiastes.
God’s away on business, and often
all I have are jokes.

Some people can speak
with the nub of a tongue.
Again, I picture Christina’s final minutes,
hear her slur a word or two in prayer
before they shoot her body
full of arrows. Finally, she sings a hymn I know,
mouth full of blood, unintelligible.

My tongue is here, pushing
lightly against my teeth, sucked
against my palate. I’ve never used it
on another woman, never cursed my parents’ god
with real vehemence. Fuck. I say it
because I want it—Christina’s tongue
in my mouth, to take that muscle
and use it for my own goddamn business.