i.

a city of patina and dross:
old men in blue coats weep in train stations,
            squares of soap, bones of light.

the city touched your skin,
turned it into cerements. I comb your hair

in the opiate dark.
you say you know the hagiography of birds
           but you cannot weaken the glass wool of memory.

ii.

once you filled a whale carcass with jasmines petals
but your hand reaching into absence

is still only a hand
                      in the Atacama Desert

where women have sought for decades
for the bones of their loved ones,
                      their bodies breaking into siroccos, into amethysts.