Topography.

She sits by the windowsill –

window seat holding her shearing form.

Fingers of sunlight splay across her back

and she smells tuberose on the morning air

as her body is swallowed by the full throat of summer.

Shifting her form to a gentle lean,

she spies a framework of desire

where the language of hummingbirds between webs of light

moves faster than the bay of the moon.

She swings her face towards the floor,

unknotting her legs from unfeeling.

Solemn of face and swollen of neck,

she looks to her breast – just the one.

A cleave in her chest – a gift.

The skin on the other like corrugated tissue paper –

the markings like an embroidery of truth

where she tells herself that it is just topography

and that she is safe.