She smoothed out

Forest, mountain, train,

Rain and boat.

She passed and passed.

Though, no guts to cross the moat:

Lighthouse sickbay reclaimed her.

 

Instead, she holed up.

Home became burrow and den.

Squinted eyes befell the ditch,

Where her shivers had lived.

 

She disregarded gloom

And scorned doom.

When sadness came,

She played the zither by the lake.

 

Her sake:

 The haven she quarried.

 

Woman, she passed

Flows of menses and hurt.

Frustration, confinement,

And stigma in numb lumps

That crooked left foot.

 

She feared the ogle of strangers.

Though, she smoothed it out.

And she stayed.

She passed

Through barbed wires

Of an uneaten passion.

She dodged the lighthouse phantom.

 

She had weaved a cloak:

Invisible, she became.

 

Yet she stayed.