In the story of your life,

there are too many mirrors
or none at all 

                in hallways 
painted white or green or blue.
The bones of trees resemble 
bodies 

        of fish picked clean
by an orange mouth and a hungry 
knife and fork. And salt 

                          is the wound
that rubs itself raw until its fingers
are hot like a pan that's just
emerged from a fire. 

                       In the story
of your life, the moon tells the same
story it has told itself and you
for years: that your common 
love— 

                 of the air, of towns  
where women sew cunning stars onto moody
fields of indigo, of horses that pause,
nostrils trembling in the dark— 

                                  is the fruit 
whose price you'll pay every time. In the story 
of your life, you will stay not because 
there's nowhere else you could go, 
but because only here

                           could you reap 
the voluptuous fragrance of its rare flowers
when they came; and only here lay its pieces 
on an anvil made strong

                            by tears. But owls
call through sleepless weeks asking the wind 
for anything that used to sing of green,
for mountains whose skirts have not
yet been unfastened— 

                         With your hands
you'll weave again a basket of rushes; 
you'll take from your breast and cover 
the light with a striped blanket 
then bend 

                       down and pray 
to the water to take it downriver, far  
away from here.