the walls were once paneled brightly, splashily—
a drop in the bucket or a room on fire

like the roof of pure expression in the form of vivid umbrellas
that now absorbs her every move

when it rains. she is a nicotine stain, no longer trendy,
just old, and compensating with watered-down decaf.

her clothes have gotten grayer every year, and she
blames the laundry. how can she focus

on sorting colors when she’s been spitting out
her husband for the last thirty-seven years?

piece by piece, she scrapes off her tongue and gathers
her belongings, which have also dwindled

to this shawl, not meant for the rain, the cacophony
of hanging birds. it’s lighter, she would argue,

than any raincoat, and almost as effective, giving her
the appearance of indifference, like her eyes,

which used to garner compliments, swift and vicious,
intended to slowly gouge them out. and now she

smiles in negative, like a dream, and reality passes
her by. even the rain is fading out, an audience

where only the smattering applause of stragglers
remains. and she walks slower than ever, not because

she can’t speed up, but because she’s humming a song
she used to sing to her son, and in that moment

she becomes a poem, etched in the language
of forgetting, of dissection. but she can be happy,

dripping as she is with newly fallen rain and
a few loose cells floating in her hair.