Twisting like fingers,
caught around these curtains –
a pattern, two colors and
more dimensions than the sea.

One wave shivers upon
our house’s shoulders, neck.
It looks so aged and wrinkled.

The rash makes rafts
of its skin, purpled from burn
and the nerves become tin
cans or rooms without guests:
she napped on the bone.

Jealous that there is not
flowerpots in less, not color –
death’s but a mirror of black.

And giving pearls to
maids: I watched them pick
the suede from clamshells
and become a mother flood.

Nature was here with
dovetailing white linen sheets
soiled by flame, cancer birth.