Female Figure
by Kayla Krut
The trees gave permission. It may be
her care for you grew as an arm of her need.
You are through security and at a gate. It hurts
to think of downing pine, yet you’ve lived in lodges.
Their home, where you grew out of them,
has a genuine fireplace, which you used to bear black winters.
You met a woman, and loved her, and made much of it.
She weakened; stiffened; made other decisions.
The forest sets, radiating its bakery scent.
Aspen highlight a face otherwise tessellated
in pine and invasive fir. The pooled moths clear.
Her figure succumbed to the order of your accent
and the resin seeping from between plates of your bark:
your butterscotch sap; her matted dripping hair;
how you were more callow than gone; how she wound through.
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