What It Means To Be Human

Mary

Pushing red from the absolute ends of fingers meant
for other use, ribbons of it under ocean

In the briefness between unexistence and death
she is thinking
” …so beautiful if you think it, the barnacle plumes from my hands…”

And feeling foolish for doing the one kindness that is never felt when it is offered.

On the railing the row of memory saved by her, four loose affiliations of bones,

tooth and nostril and temple dent,
alchemy and gold and mercury amalgam.

Pickets in a fence, Mary thinks, with them dented, rubbed right out between.

Cleo speaks where Mary is bleeding,

” …and wasn’t Genesis told by someone when there was no one?”

As though memories are real, a leaf on water at rest..