I discover kernels in poems. The shell breaks open to a singed blossom of hair. Before I spit the weirdness out, I savor a reeling storm in my nose and mouth. For a split second, I see a topiary. I awake to dreams; perhaps they are catchers to my middle-aged songs. They stream outside my mouth. Dribbling, dripping from edges of photographs lingering in shadows of a spider web, stubborn in the south-east corner of my body. I untangle it for a split second. The abyss lights up. I experience survival in kinships. Kinship mongers, in abundant supply, exist on my fringes and are always in transit like lost mail packages. They arrive at my doorstep, waiting to be found. For a split second, like menopausal flushes, they insist on being seen, defiant offerings. Unclasped, I discover fragments of the inevitable. I am aware there is no antithesis to the inhabitable progression of bodies. I step into a bath shoveled with coconut, bubba berry, hibiscus soak that had just been unpacked. I had memorized the steps of how an older woman can drown gracefully in a bath. The article about female writer suicides did say that dying is not a fashion statement.
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