I started this year in heavy furs,
linens and velvet draped over burlap
dungarees, the sleeves and hems

heavily embroidered with salt and earth,
the egg white bones of small regrets
strung through yards of damaged hair

split at the ends, chipped china molars and
incisors, thorn and rue and columbine
dragging down around my heels, so

I could only stand and resign my torso
to the soft, dark peat and the lavender sky
consuming my silhouette, swallowing my body
in the slow thorough hunger of a snake.

Then I was somewhere else entirely,
planets turning sparks of endless light
in a cat's eye, the scar under my mouth going warm,

shedding my layers away to a cotton shift
and the sharp incision of your gaze.