She plays mother,
wraps a scarf around her neck.

Red, once,
a proclamation of this,
of who she is.

In her letters,
she writes of little strong hands
taking her
up and up to the end of the world,
the breathlessness
of love, in which she thought,
and afterwards wrote,
and afterwards danced.

The world takes her
and she paints her neck
with something beautiful;
there’s a lot here
about getting to the roots
of it all.

And from this,
something grows.
Something, now, is cultivated
in the passive tense,
and then poets flock to her,
their little strong hands
grasping against her neck
for a taste of the bruises
and the colours.

But she is a spiral in herself,
a coil waiting to snap,
she is the roots of it all.
And the world wants
what the world wants;
to dig it all up
and plant something acceptable.

Still,
the silkworm woman
will not yield,
caught in the effervescence
of spider webs and champagne
she sings,
she shouts,
opens her mouth,
and silence pours out
of the wound.