after Diane Lato

I wake to trees gone skeletal, frosted chrysanthemums, fits of ginger where the sky hangs, death of things glaring as sunbeam upon pupil.

Already, December dresses up in her whites and golds—trades her emeralds for silver when moon swells full, sealing me inside my shadow self for winter.

Clam shut in subnivean burrows, I am opaline. Water makes a home in my marbled body, solidifies, and threatens to rip my heart’s skin open like a broiled peach.

What would escape if I let it? What spoiled memory like a summer dress—man handled, then buried— would crawl from my joints? What nicotine poison? What invisible, tongue-punched bruises would smoke- seep from my violet veins? What matters

is the net of stars that will catch them, spin them into bronze lacquer that, come spring, will rain from sky to fill canyons cracked open in order to bloom. What matters is that I will wear my scars burnished like ornaments instead of wounds.