Folktale
                               

A woman from Castelvetrano
used to grow roses with
a scent so strong and wild
it still rises in my nostrils
whenever a cloud passes the moon
and pulls sadness down over me
like a veil of black netting.

She hid fish teeth in a jar
of cracked glass, scrambled my eggs
in thick, green oil and the night
her daughter died I watched her
bite a cold wax apple.

She came from a dusty old village
in Sicily, that place where
the bones of lost white mules
sing in the mountains, and oh
I watched her choose her steps
slowly coming down the ruined
trails of this life. Sometimes
her death finds me like a sleepwalker,
lifts the veil from my face
and kisses me on the eyes.