Saint Anna
Anna is sleeping again. The dog hunts moths, who come in through the window. Their wings are fat and white. The dog takes them into her mouth so they crawl down her tongue to build homes where it's warm and wet. Hush. Anna is sleeping. She barely moves. She is hardly breathing. A long time ago, I mean lifetimes, she was a mother. She held her daughter in her hands. The girl was blue and screaming. Anna asked her softly for her name. Anna looks holy. Saint Anna. Patron of lace-makers, of carpenters, of lost things. Anna, who dreams now the disparate threads of a tapestry. The dog hiccups a pair of still-living wings. Because it is summer, Anna can finally sleep. Remember when many years ago Anna put her whole body in the ocean. It was perhaps another life altogether, I was only a bird then, watching from the shore. It was the cold North Atlantic. It was the closest thing to a baptism. Her skin turned blue and gold. Now the dog runs on the shore, lapping up crustaceans. She builds another world inside her body. Anna is floating in her previous histories. She is tethered by her name to the sand.
December 29th, 2015