She was a slim volume really,
a short read, an afternoon
in shades of cypress, conceived
on her own costly parchments.
She prefaced a day a warning,
that if any eye should scan her
lines to her own bleak skin,
to her own terse margins,
to the limbs akimbo nonsense
implied by her scrawling,
there would be a price to pay,
found blank beyond the epilogue.
But she was a slim volume really,
a short read in shades of cypress,
grass and thick with bugs.
And there, pocked by her words,
torn by such strongfrail inks,
torn like a hyphen dangled
at the bottom of a page,
ripped from her tongue
I hung on the breath of an epilogue –
a few faint phrases:
“All that you have read here is true.
All that is consumed here is you.”
Sweet and Bitter Greens 