‘I trained as a translator’, she said, ‘before…’

sharp tang of bleach and blood as she passes the butcher’s

sudden oil on water

words suffocating as dead fish floating

breathless in the gaps where meaning

swam to 

the concern of crowding shoppers the 

tangle of synapse and neuron the 

ministrations of St. John’s

vocabulary too blunt for ambition 

folding into acid clearing the nasal cavity

soul

salvation

sanity rising,

thirsting like a sunflower calipered

with love. Always 

love. Straight as a cane and turning

old newspaper, broom handles,

the detritus of life’s shape

shifting abstract and transcending.

The shot stars fallen 

form now so much pretty debris made 

tangible in her newly apprenticed hands.