In Deference

On windy days L sits by the window
with a book in her lap, waiting
for a chill to rustle through its pages
like a cat through the reeds. In this way
her stories reveal themselves in sudden
jagged fragments, acquaintances vanish,
love flickers and flames,
landscapes melt into conversation
into monologue into description;
paragraphs fissure mid-sentence,
mood writhing, dissected on an uneven plane.
The world balances with its spine sinking
into the fault line of her pale legs,
pleats of her skirt carrying
its motion into the afternoon
while slender pearly arms pillar her head.
Her eyes close to make room for the sun.
The roar of the freeway douses the crackling
of crisp pages as death goes unnoticed; confined
to an instant, smoky tendrils encircle the infinite
and its already crystallized moments, drawing them to
constellation. All far from seamless, unseen, crestfallen,
she wants to know if love lasts; who she will see again;
if her journey was an arc or an ark.