My Head a Pine Cabinet with Female Cardinal Ascending

is one way to say the episode subsides.

I am a girl again. A tendril of vine

cage snakes to the floor.

Also inside you’ll find the damp

of ice melt. Whiteout

still in memory. And that outpost

room: stale biscuits and Lipton,

the trompe l’oeil of the hunted hare,

matches, gauze. A medical book

showing close-ups of frostbite,

fingers swollen to the size of blowfish.

Whether the chronic dusk

was a result of winter or heavy drapery

I can’t say. Nor am I certain

if the hungry susurrations

came from wind or dog pack or wind

in the mind. I would have gone to the post office

but there was no post office.

At home your letters piled up.

One from an emptied seaside town.

One on paper cut from the pith of a mulberry tree.