Tourist If she could sit like stone on this stone ledge, steep wind tearing her hair back, knees sealed to clavicle, shins in a tight forearm-grip – a paperclip of flesh – how long would leaving take? Her breath would slow to nearly nothing. Her heart, as well. Her arms would loosen, open. Her heat would dissipate, and with it, words: storm-clouds, solitude, sit like stone, the failed instruction, rise: use every trace of everything you have to rise. If she could sit past rise – Birds would venture in to carry off her flesh, the threads of rotting cloth.

In time her stone-colored bones, unfolded, would lie beyond the hungers, lie where other lives had moved them; would polish, powder, sift into the elements; would chase the four directions down; would wheel within wheels, pass through the fire-flash of days and out onto night’s plains: day on night, black ice on wing, shadow on mandible, carapace on seed; through settle, to toss, to rest again – arrived in the gaze of all the gazes – life-sized and other-wise.