They speak of her weight
the weather and the worms in her brain.
A captive audience
trying to deflect their words
with closed crusty eyelids
she traces butterflies spiralling in her skull.
Times there were flocks
Spanish queens, emperors, hermits, weavers
silver-washed fritillary
and from the far purple fields
a rare pearl in parenthesis.
Today one small cloud flits her mind’s blue.
Scattering if rains come
a few graylings on her parched tongue.
Tinctured with the colours
of dusk and stone
one she truly wants
shutting pale wings vanishes in a crevice of bone.
Contracted forefinger
turned perch, finally coaxes Invisible down
sweetest communion of any
spreading spicy and molten
through her mouth.
Till a voice says where the hell did that come from?
A synapse must have sparked
somewhere.
Shaky and chapped
her dusty lips
summon a cardinal’s prayer:
Lord take me home and letting me go let me go alone.