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It was the imperceptible bob and swivel

of her wrist on the return, like links of

anchor chain as they descend to depths

that few will see.

Those fingers splayed, unfolding as she rose

like petals, and as pink—this gold and silver

lash in rigid light, the eyes that fell in rhythm

with her posture as it arched across

the floorboards, a morning ray above the sea.

One recalls the rippling tautness of the shaft

that breaches surface, peaks on sinking

coils, echoes further still into the deep.

And all this while, Camponovo’s fingers folded

still and risen tight against his lips, a boulder shafted

firm against a crevice wind, or duct tape

in a hurricane.  Too much light, those eyes,

and all the tension that one breath held, two, or

three:  his tongue, elastic strained against the weight,

or kindred to a spider’s web, the firmest of the fine.

Meanwhile,

it is all the younger one can do to still her arms,

taut and shivering against the echoed sting

of autumn in the pattern of her breath.  She pulls

her coat in close and trudges forward,

rails of sand and dried grass trailing in her wake.

As failing summer light arrays itself

across a tangled spill of hair, she turns her face up,

swallows light like too-tart lemonade,

and knows, at once, that this footprint trail is wider

than the one she left in last December’s snow,

that as the leaves turn shade around her she will lose

her teeth and feel her shoes grow tighter,

spend her strength to solve for subtle x and y,

and she draws a breath, feels time pass in her chest.

She matches step with the tempo in her

ears and pulls the nylon jacket tighter, sees it stretch,

like someone’s shorted sheet about to tear.  Dust

cresting now in waves around her ankles, she

pivots back to loose herself, slams her lips against the wind,

and as she starts to run she looks ahead, looks up,

her sweep of hair electric in the breeze.