Blanche

I found a photograph of you,

Hidden among raw silk and lace.

Old and tattered

eaten by moon moths,

like everything else,

Like me.

Wrapped in lambs’ wool

You stood between two trees

With moonstone palms of white and skin of milk

And poppy seeds, the birthmarks on

your body bare and new, transparent almost

letting the colorless sky sink into you.

I think I can see the bones coming through

Two ivory branches, that you call arms,

And marbled fingertips with lines written in white charcoal

Invisible, untrue,

vague guidances, the maps,

My anthropology of you

Unreadable like ghosts of blue.

Blue is the blood that’s seeping through,

The ink you spilt

On blanching tulips,

they drank it gratefully

That sweet, sweet poison of you,

Turning them ill and grey,

Their droopy heads like sleeping swans,

White ashes in the flowerbed.

You said, winter will kill them if I don’t instead.

oh the sweet, sweet.

poisonous you.