Night came on so strong with responses.

Three Chinese lanterns pushed their limits

in the drunken skyline, its plum

upholstery, the orange-lamped street, silver yoke

of a blown-out egg upon the garden.

There were no chains anywhere.

It was all very delicious

and would never be repeated.

Three lanterns followed their bliss.

The following morning, Maria found one in her allotment

among the cabbages

covered with dirt and the message lay,

its neck broken, the mouth gone,

the unspoken written all over it.

She glanced at the sky to let it know

and soon had all ten fingers in the dirt.

She went to work, singing in the call to sing

for all of those who cannot sing a note,

whose days are long and savage,

whose little red hearts are beating their mercies,

whose marriages flicker like birthday cake,

whose ends arrive suddenly.

She did it for the sake of doing it,

tended the allotment, remarked the rows

to a tune of crows

that hung there, their fires black and hidden.

Then, they flew. They were simply not there

but their sweetness stayed.

Maria hummed with them, back up the close

with carrots and a cool look on her.

She wasn’t thinking about her mother.

About the mirror of her body on the wall.

It was always there, all of it,

the fruit of the sky and the bones of the ground,

a certain flight of dream

caught between two somewheres.