Gown Sonnet

Somewhere in some town there lies 
a bride, in a house— in an attic— in a trunk,
in a tangled mess of lace and limbs, sunken
clouds floating across the landscape of her eyes.
Even now, her lace has begun to curl like eye-
lashes on a night ready for batting, and her blouse
see-through as a ghost. But it isn’t that blouse
she now rests in. It’s a gown her mother dyed

in small snakeweed in warm waters weeks 
before her wedding day. The bride wasn’t found
until years later when a child in a veil crowned
with dandelions & mums playing hide-and-seek

broke the latch, and lifted the wooden lid up—
unearthing a beautiful head of hair still done up.