What was rampant in me was not wisteria. Perhaps decay, or loss of reflection.

No one like me gets old, or so I thought, even as I watched the days fade into each other.

Was I no one? Which phrase means a grown-up girl: mica-gilded; pure myth; gone?

Thoreau might say I was trying to find the door to nothingness, that the wild was already in me.

However, I walked out my bed to find my skin, only to return moondrunk, bramble-laden,

stripped to sinew, a broken syntax. No denying how I got here, I laid down among the tall grass

and came up a specter. I came up everywhere.

While crossing the river of shorn paper,
I forget my name. My body,
a please leave. I want a patron saint

that will hush the dog growling
at trimmed hedges it sees in the night.
I want the world to be without language,

but write my thoughts down just in case.
Send help, the dog’s growling
won’t let me sleep. I haven’t slept in days.

I am looking for a patron saint, but none
will let me pray for guidance. There is a buzz
in my right ear that never goes away, no matter

how hard I hit the side of my head
for loose change. Most mornings I wonder
who I can pray to that will make sure I never

have to survive waking again. Most nights
I forget to pray the rosary, though I sleep with it
by the bed. I’ve never owned a TV because

I’ll replay this conversation in my head.
My dead lovers are hungry in the kitchen,
so I fix them food they cannot eat. I make toast

of vellum paper, fry an egg made of crepe.
I only want a patron saint to protect me.
I only want someone else to bleed.

I drew a picture long ago—
    A picture of a sullen sea; 
A picture that I value now
    Because it clears Life’s mystery. 

My sea was dark and full of gloom; 
   I painted rocks of sombre hue. 
My sky alone bespoke of light, 
    And that I painted palest blue.

But e’en across my sky of blue
    Stretched troubled clouds of sodden gray, 
Through which the sun shone weak and dim, 
    With only here and there a ray. 

Around my rocks the yellow foam 
   Seemed surging, moaning in despair
As if the waves, their fury spent, 
   Left naught but desolation there. 

Three crafts with fluttering sails I drew, 
    And one sailed near the rocks of gray, 
The other on its westward course, 
   Went speeding out of danger’s way.

The other still outdistanced them 
    Where sky and water seemed to met. 
I painted that with sails full set, 
    And then my picture was complete.

My life was like the sullen sea, 
   Misfortunes, woes, my rocks of gray, 
The crafts portrayed Life’s changing scenes, 
   The clouded sky Life’s troubled Day.

I longed to paint that picture o’er
   Without the rocks of sombre hue; 
Without the troubled clouds of gray,
  I’ll paint the sky of brightest blue.

My sea shall lay in calm repose, 
    No hint of surging, moaning sigh.
My crafts, unhindered by the rocks,
  Shall speed in joyous swiftness by.

But this shall be when brightest hours
  Of hope and cheer are given me.
I’ll paint this picture when Life’s sun 
   Shines clear upon Prosperity