Family Portraits

I'm here to take notes, scholar's squint in my eyes, mind like my pages:
even-lined, professional,
ready to see, not to be seen into.

Pen poised for thoughts of the first portrait, I see
Eve's round-cheeks, child-glow in woman's skin.
My focus narrows to meet
my own eyes speculating from her sockets:
"Good for food,
wondrously lovely,
I'll become so wise."
I grimace and turn away
to her husband,
note the three quarters pose with shaking script,
follow the angle of strong jaw
reluctantly to large brown eyes--
and meet, again, my own blue,
shadowed, shifting:
"I was afraid, because I was naked,"
defensive: "That woman You gave me . . . ."
Abel--I scratch into my book, glad for lined-white:
Young, strong,
easy smile and slant of shoulder,
lack of tension.
Now for the eyes . . .
A shining, a longing, the yearning in my heart
for God, for God--
Vision blurs.
A sudden blank pain
What? Why?
And I move to the culprit.
Cain's eyes swallow me--
I smolder behind their darkness.
A Voice reaches for me, "Sin desires to have you, but you must master it,"
but I swat away restraint,
turn petulantly to let in the thing crouching at the door.
A howl and a leap--

No
No
No

My notebook splays on the floor like a creature whose back has been broken.
I sob, slobbering against my drawn up knees.
Four pairs of eyes, all my own, pierce my back.
"Who am I?" I dare not look.

Oddly, Someone seems to have slain Cain's beast. I peak to see it disappear,
like a corpse on a computer game.
The Champion drapes a covering across my shoulders,
bars the eyes from my back,
tucks the garment close:
"You are my child. And when you see Me, you will be like Me."