before she was death I
often saw her in the orchard with
her pet ducks and fluttery dress
when ancient pear trees abandoned their leaves
she’d pick the weakest and tie them to her hat
collect the newest, give them to the river
the longest, she’d knit into baskets and matts
gift them to old maidens and lonely men

and the rest, she fed to the flowers

and I know that before she was death
she loved flowers but she
never plucked them
she waited for their mothers to let go,
then she’d take the cadavers home
and make beauty out of them

before she was death, she liked
to talk to the graveyard at night
dark wasn’t ugly to her,
and silence was only the trees talking

now, night lives in her obsolete house
when sun goes down, he likes to come out and
pluck stars off skinny bushes
her brightly painted walls are old lattice leaves
behind, the mountains laugh
and beneath them, a kingdom flourishes
not like corn fields near the bank,
a dust-storm, or a mistletoe

and no one talks of where she went though
the talk goes everywhere—

but I know she too feared lone woods
and moonless skies
she saw beauty in all, but nothing
sweet in the softness of flesh

and I know she despised the old cave
behind her house, for it was where she went

her crown is beautified with scared salvias,
petunias tremble at her name, and
daffodils don't even speak, and I
know I don’t want to take her place
so don’t offer me these pretty tiaras
and silence is so much more than trees talking

and some plants like to crawl up on others
**** the life and spit it out on the dirt but I’d
rather be towed down by those furious winds

and meddle not with me or my blood
I could show a softer way in—

like how her blades cut through grey grass
and how her fingers twisted to tie them strands to sheets
and meddle not with me or my blood
I could show a faster way out—
how the leaves bid goodbye as they glided
away with the waters; how her paintbrushes
emerged, soaking, out those liquids
and how she painted poetry out of dust

meddle not with me or my blood

she, who moulded the ground
into toys and pots, taught me
to befriend the daggers, and trust them
taught me how stinking corpses were better
than scentless lilies—and fanged
wolves were often what willed the sheep to live

before she was death she
used to sing a ballad unusual,
'I do not wish to take your place on that
throne, dear death,
I’d rather rot in your prison cells'

but death has not time for pleas.