Virtue

My skeleton is steady and my body moves

against the black. When the devils fall, I hear them falling—

At first, the only sounds are my hands

releasing and grasping, my feet hushing against the rungs

my hands have passed over. I think I am going up. The ladders tilt away

from me and where one ends, I take up another. Wings of the devils flap.

Cloak of my skin taut to muscle, muscle

a cloak for bone, bone a cloak for—?

If the ladders do not go up, I am lost. Have I stuffed my soul

into the marrow? I hear the shoosh, shoosh when they fall—

If they fall, have their wings failed them? Maybe they are falling up,

flying, maybe I climb across but never up, maybe I am

a devil who knows only her body, who listens only

to her body moving through space, never pausing, rushing through

this black field of air. Hand on a rung, another. Beneath that sound is

something softer, the sound of calluses forming on my hands and feet.