[what is locked out wants everything back]
From the cicada lace of my body steps
a ceramic woman with a row of birds for hair,
her face a tapestry hung from beaks.
Clouds catch and pass over glass-skinned
hands: her feet peonies licked open by ants.
She is not the mouth of anything I write
these days
that begin with a stutter of sun, then rain.
She stands on my dresser before a small
wooden crowd, speaking the language of
carved earth, stone. Like the silver back
of a river or snake, she steps constantly
new from her shed moment into its altared
perception. I wake each dawn to watch where
she falls, learning how
day finds its twin: one black and one blood.