I invent old woman
childless as me and my friends.
Call her Eulalie, Sophronia,
one of those perfumed names
no longer in use.
Shaken out: a few dead moths
last century’s clover.
Or Grandmother, honorary title
she can exchange at the bodega
for jalapeno potato chips, bottles of beer,
eternal devotion.
She’s home on Thursdays.
I arrive in a swirl of same-aged women.
We take off our shirts.
She opens the hinges in our backs
adjusts the delicate machinery.
What we see now: her living room
with its cardinal rivers
the couch whose metal wings
scrape against the floor
a cat admiring itself in the glass
trying on the head of a monkey.
Witch, where do you come from?
What do you do when I forget you?
I’m a shard of broken woman
like you see in museums—
some artist’s lover’s charcoal wrist
or mad queen’s lock of hair.
The price for growing up
is grief in shocking colors.
You have to cook it slowly
with aromatics, not let it burn.
I do.
