My Head a Pine Cabinet with Female Cardinal Ascending
is one way to say the episode subsides.
I am a girl again. A tendril of vine
cage snakes to the floor.
Also inside you’ll find the damp
of ice melt. Whiteout
still in memory. And that outpost
room: stale biscuits and Lipton,
the trompe l’oeil of the hunted hare,
matches, gauze. A medical book
showing close-ups of frostbite,
fingers swollen to the size of blowfish.
Whether the chronic dusk
was a result of winter or heavy drapery
I can’t say. Nor am I certain
if the hungry susurrations
came from wind or dog pack or wind
in the mind. I would have gone to the post office
but there was no post office.
At home your letters piled up.
One from an emptied seaside town.
One on paper cut from the pith of a mulberry tree. 