She Is Twice Touched
and Once Recoiled

under the downpour of
grey December
she is twice touched
once recoiled

pruned brown skin
pink creased eyes
little licks of breaths
nudge for kind words
inside the dark tunnel
of sodden intentions

winter this tyranny
between sleeping
and waking distracts
signals to her limbs
craving to butcher
the earth into slivers of
bones as her crow-
feathered hair wrinkles
through like displaced air
tucking where margins
of spring learning again
to erase itself from scratch