The link appears early morning
in her email inbox: Welcome
to the patient portal. The test
result report has only three words—
Finding: [ __ ] mass. Outside, crepe
myrtles weigh down the branches.
Their ends, untrimmed, could brush
the heads of passersby on the sidewalk.
After rain, the streets look like studies
in pointillism. As in: what is the point
to all this loosened beauty, the crumpled
asterisks illuminating asphalt? Contrast
and elaboration. A chain of incidents
interrupted by digressions. Somewhere,
a reader worked to decode the possible meanings
trapped by light in a frame, on film, under glass.
`