you asked me what I want to wear
in the romantic moments in some far off dream
I will tell you black
or I will dress in shadows
if shadows could be cloth
I would wear red if my body was the body I possessed before I gave birth
As if to say
As if to say I never mattered
The syrup forms in a puddle in my fridge
The toppled jars inside the side compartment
And the sludge that built up from too many lazy Saturdays
The wind without a wind
slips past us
or through us if we are the whisper
of father asking me to dig his garden in the edge of some war
I hear it in my sleep
a line rearing up from the static
a woman
speaking of railroad earth,
the path with ribs,
as she spreads her own thoughts
between them like flesh,
the conductor having once reached out,