Women tell time by the body. They are like clocks. They are always fastened to the earth, listening for its small animal noises.

Women tell time by the body. They are like clocks. They are always fastened to the earth, listening for its small animal noises.

O starry night, This is how I want to die

Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far.

I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.

But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build. Twice I have so simply declared myself, have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy, have taken on his craft, his magic.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.