Night bends. Bends.
Its green face
presses the window.
A black sun hangs.
Its teeth in a glass.
My back
against the crack
in the motherwet plaster.
It opens
to a road,
black trees, fog,
the bloated roofs
of distant houses.
A jawline
along the far wall.
A chair. A cheek
ringingringing.
A cup gone cold,
my shoes to the wall.
Dust in polished places.
Nothing out of place.
I press
one day against the next,
against the next,
redredred
at the seam.
My mother sits
beneath the lamp,
her face broken
into yellow planes.
On the table:
babynails.
matches sealed in wax.
knife.
salt.
compass pointing north.
Buckle buckle her mother buckled.
She lifts the pack,
holds it against her body,
passes it on
passes it
down to me.
The doorway opens
into the year I was born,
whitewhitewhite.
Where my mother was.
A wake in the air.
Nothing falls
up or down.
Cross-legged.
Pack between my knees.
Everything is here.
One thing is not.
I set my hand
where she had set her weight.
The floor takes
the heat from my body.
Swallows.
Slowly.
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