I have a corner of the room, held tight against my chest –

it is worn, the shark teeth of a blanket, a blue shadow sewn

in the dimness of drawn curtains.  

 

No one reaches.

                                                                                                                                     The stillness echoes, warms my eyelids from underneath the folds – hot, white light, tears a sulk  - lips, bitten yellow, and my throat

as thick as honey.

 

There is a triangle of light, a  communion of fingers – across the room, for want of life

but no one reaches

                                                                                                                                      for the veil is cold; silver spine cracks of lace, and takes my face like a cast of splinters – the goal of my open mouth to see after,

a place for moths to nest.

 

I hear footsteps all day and night, they clip my better mind – my heart in my grave with my head in my hands – it breaks, unread. I have not been raised to raise my voice and draw the silence, a wardrobe of hours in the room, full -

 

and that which I cannot reach with death

 

for I am not dead.

 

In my disguises, you see me

one with the shed of the day – a glass of wine, a lip synch with a friend, a poise of sanity, even veined, walking around the lead of routine

 

that never reaches

 

or convinces me that I have left this room –

                                                                                                                                                the must it be, of glass suspensions, the pendulum of my heavy dress,  grey and fluffed with sleep, and incomplete – iron filings in the shape of a girl -

 

                                                                                                                                    a chord

dances in the dust, a compass rests -

a shard of salt shattered sun,

less, less, less...