CAROLINE CABRERA
I guess it’s too late to live on the farm
In the symphony hall I made an undead.
I bathed in a voice you had taken from me
and emerged sparkling, a phantom in the round
room. I pinged off walls and shapes, a bat,
systematic in my exit. I built your specter
from drifting, white snow and watched
as it scattered. Now the world has grown up
warm around me. Years have intervened.
The task of constructing your effigy falls away.
Instead loose straw, a mannerism. My heart
was iconic like a red barn, and then my
body was reddened like a barn, and now
the barn has burned, but I built a window
box from its wreckage. What I bury in the soil
is nothing or is all my own.