There sits a woman who
cannot feel the rain.
Trapped in thoughts
that cross her to the neck
and stifled tongue.

A bench beneath holds
up her sodden world,
to push back hands on
a crystal face and nail
her to her seat.
She cannot feel a single
lachrymal word nor
hear a vertical eye as
they, by the familied thousands,
rip her ripe in two.

Perhaps it is for her ultimate
benefit that these thorough
roving mouths are but
the muted daggers of her mind,
else she might stand
from the bench
fall into her lap and feel.
Oh, unthinkable as it may seem, to feel
those manual nails in her feet
and free the fingertips on hands that
tear out fenestrated faces
firmly held a pace away by freakish
phrases.

There sits a woman in the rain:
all dressed in red and white and slain.