CAKI WILKINSON

Hibernaculum

Wynona Stone is having trouble broaching.
Her sighs form sullen bubbles on the ceiling,
impervious to sun. It wears her out,

this rut she’s in. At least when she was reeling
she had a line. Lately, she’s come to doubt
her tactics, all that effort slinging mud

to wallow in it. Could she actualize
a cool detachment—like the hard-shelled buds
of certain pond plants, which, designed to sink

and spend the winter in the benthos, rise
in bloom each spring—Wynona wouldn’t mind
the darker months. Instead, etiolated,

approaching dormancy, she can’t unwind.
Though she’ll admit she needs a simile
like she needs a lead balloon, heavily-weighted,

sometimes a simile is her best shot
to see things as they are. The rotten weather
is not Wynona’s problem: like a knot,

her heart’s pulled taut inside this self she’s spun,
and, like a knot, what’s holding her together
is the energy she’d need to come undone.