What is it you forget in your vigil,
cell after cell like petals on the grave
of first days, so often strange, your veil
of skin ruffled, renewed, as if you grieved

in the blind color of too much light.
So late you sleep there, so leaden the pour
of suns that cannot touch you. The blood you let,
the foaming of the crevice—what old prayer

of needle and thread could ever answer
the power of arrival. The body opens
its red door which in turn opens the flare
of the eye. Don't you remember. You pinned

each to itself like an armless sleeve.
Unlikely, true. White shadow of the wound
that is no wound. The wind in the leaves
and the sound it makes, after the wind.