I.

She crouches on the shelf, cramped, where she hid the blanket that hid her.
Spots of brown-red blood, bold on the blanket that hid her. 
Her fresh skin brushstrokes against that blanket that hid her.
She charts the X’s on her left thigh, one cut for each failure

to snuff beneath the blanket that bid her live.




II.

(She is sorry her gripped words chipped into every held hand;

nothing could have rid her of that then.)




III.

In another version, not X’s

but goat-willows with fuzzy buds

like ones that grew near the field

where it happened; she loved

to brush the fur against her face

all over it felt like love.

She cut love

into her anxious thigh

so it could carry her. Now,

her forefinger traces

the vines the way a mother

traces her baby’s jawline. She lingers

on the buds,

remembering soft,

re-membering soft.




IV.

She segments the blanket-that-bid-for-her into palm-sized pieces,

calligraphies one letter onto each piece as many times through the alphabet

until each piece has a name. Arranges the pieces into a poem

no one will ever read: a narrative poem with a speaker, unspeakable.




V.

She gently pricks her left forefinger, anoints each piece, like the Passover ritual,

how the finger dips into wine, dabs the wine onto a plate once for each plague

until her people were set free. Like the ritual over Sabbath candles, she circles

her open hands three times over the words, gathers the air above them, draws her palms

to her face, closes her eyes, and sings: 
          blessed are you, O Lord our God; bless this one who is still, here
With an Amen, she jumbles the shards, sews them to form

a skirt, letters facing outward. Wears it to remind herself a sparrow’s song is always

the same— and isn’t.