Blink and you will miss her mutinous
retreat. Dill in the kitchen window has wilted
but not quite gone to seed, books are tossed
aside like faulty algorithms meant to solve grief.
The blast that once lifted her finally flagged
and she fluttered to the floor like leaves in a heap
by the mudroom door. She still insists there is nothing
implied by adjusting herself to all this spent chaos
of grey. It is the opposite of metaphor, she says,
a story that isn’t just true, but especially true
in the resonance of hard rain on sage brush
and the wind worrying her ironwood trees.
