Tangles Not To Be Undone.

At night you rise, hair slurred into confession. Two oranges ripen toward rot on the bedside

table. You wish you were shooting birds, the body of a thousand willows, needing no one, a figure carved from chalk. Sickness is almost done and you're not sure what to put in its place. Try the photograph of Uncle Charles as a boy, Grandmother's rosewood table, Aunt Josie's eyes bruised and sweet like tobacco. Remember how Mama would scoop crab apples from a bowl in the sink, checking each one for spots as the water strained between her fingers. How she made us drink Tang and hot tea until our urine glowed. Wrap your head in a flannel scarf when winter begins and only let it out with the crocus or after, when the world turns ash-soft again, if sickness will let you go so soon.