Come around again, my mother, heavy
as a single stone dropped or dropped
well. That is, you recur, again the instance
of again the insistence of your stones
in my stones, rounded out. My body
is just a memory of your body.
The smallest fingerling of my pearskin
shell is ritual sacrifice to how you
come around,
to the you you are before you are.
My body is just a memory, fading
soft into the twilight—a thin, low wall
between us on which I place a stone
and place a stone and place a stone each
night, a hard and silent sorry. But then I
come around.