her heart struggling to be a diamond, but what of the bat with the broken wing?

what of the giant’s furniture left to tatter in the ceaseless rain? call

 

the dagger friend, call the heart a pendulum. a metronome winds down

at the crick of a lizard’s neck. the orchestra have packed their bows into the small hours

 

before the pearl of dawn. a girl speaks quietly to the rays of light when they begin

to crest the lazy horizon. they find their way into the palms of her rosy

 

hands, give agony a draught for temporary peace. they say that when the first

ghost was found so was the great panacea. welcome to the temporary existence

 

of every nature we have come to love. eat from the mother our useless

bones. now the mistake: the churched wing, the butter on the burn, the girl’s mouth

 

silent as a waning moon. the mistake being that ghosts are dead things, departed—

they come from the dead, they are as much like the mushroom or the allium

 

that sprouts from mulch. that is to say, our lives are longer than we could ever

fathom. the girl plies the sachets of juice from a pomegranate, bloodier

 

than any mortal pain. with needle + thread she sews the disparate fruits together:

avocado, pomelo; crab-apple, tangerine. life let out to linger in the field.