
Holes,
holes in everything, even bones,
even minds become soiled doilies,
and the flightless wings
of blighted memory
are blood-rusted stubs,
not bridal lace.
Long ago, I must have been
a sorrowful, leathery ape of a child,
clambering in the moss-grown ruins
of my mother’s madness.
On the last day that I had a mind,
I remembered walking
between hot, copper columns of sunlight,
meeting my father’s bones
and my brother’s ashes
and answering their questions
about my charred, failed life.
On the last day that I had a body,
a crone with black smoke wings
instead of arms
left a pearl-colored child,
who was as lovely, silent and stupid as a fish,
in a bundle on my front porch.
I knelt and cradled her
against my stammering heart,
and I rocked the death baby
rocked the death baby.



