She was a slim volume really,
a short read, an afternoon
in shades of cypress, conceived
on her own costly parchments.

She prefaced a day a warning,
that if any eye should scan her
lines to her own bleak skin,
to her own terse margins,

to the limbs akimbo nonsense
implied by her scrawling,
there would be a price to pay,
found blank beyond the epilogue.

But she was a slim volume really,
a short read in shades of cypress,
grass and thick with bugs.
And there, pocked by her words,

torn by such strongfrail inks,
torn like a hyphen dangled
at the bottom of a page,
ripped from her tongue

I hung on the breath of an epilogue,
A few faint phrases:
"All that you have read here is true.
All that is consumed here is you."