Sand and Smoke

There are things carved in relief. Like the skeletons of churches, a sub-rosa apparatus beneath bone. I am always drowning in marrow. Decision tips an hourglass; what was sand is smoke. She got her first tattoo in a shop on second street; a kite that ribboned its tail around her wrist. Years later, a diner in Trent; a backwash of Bakelite and teak. She smoked clove cigarettes, lips drawn in stitchlines. We questioned, teeth to skin, reflections in a third eye; images fell from an iris' edge- impressions lost in the drift. Borromean dropped a ring, what was left was crossed. Behind a heavy door, a kite with a faded tail identifies the wrist. A man in a smock with sleeves too short for his arms traces its marbled flight; beneath his palm he knows every scar is a victory.