Geisha Considered as Making
Outside the door, voices range,
Each a petal barred from another
life
And brought here. Do you see
The door is torn? I eat in rooms
without windows
And refuse to paint my lips. Once
I wore red and served an open hand,
Was young and blew into reeds.
Now all the frames contain wings.
They move in my sleep. Did you
imagine
This fine erosion? I entered your
body
As night enters all the lit corners
of a room
And lasts. Sky presses the trees
Back into the earth. I loved my own
roundness and loss. Do not forget:
There are webs and webs between us,
Tight-woven and clean.
The light is your voice, a backdrop
Of sound outside the door.
My body can hold it, shoulders bare
As the ground that used to harbor
Our steps. Without warmth in this
season,
How do you think your fine mouth
could exist?
Reframe the words and this picture
inhales. Witness the microscope,
narrowing on the eye until we see
only particles that swim
in dark light. They are blind.
How to account for ice in small piles,
sudden by the door, and rain
uncontainable eight thousand miles away?
Sometimes two lives coincide,
in water frozen and water
withholding the ground from our steps.
The fruit inside is bitter, skin sweet,
and both are eaten at once.
The teacup painted in pomegranate
and leaves — one touch to the lips
mars it, the body inhales
onto any surface
it can. Insects whittle their limbs
to hairs, all for music,
for habit. The heart in the mouth
another terrible seed.
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