She was somewhere
at the zero level

when the chart went blank. She told herself
to write. As if her single hand
scrawl into that something

which would not be enough . . . could answer
the dictations of future. She tapped
the clock-glass & a thunder of words
sent no message. Incoherent letters spilled.

Instead, she drifted dry streets
in the noon pulse of winter & her eyes
filled with a sand white tick.

She saw a policemen's badge held
the symbolic value of a mirror. It reminded her, the
body
has its equations—a blue hitting stick
shaped like a human tongue;   storm vents     the lung;

the little pink box, her heart, once began
square & wooden     like a child's toy block;     no
matter

the yearsplinter       it pounds
voice bright,         soft & stinging.

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Maureen is the author of Apparition Wren.