Unbearable Poem by Melissa Morphew

... at midday, she crawled beneath the house
to escape the cloud-blue sky, replace it with
dapple-dusted sun, a grayness and a light,
a quiet of shadows,

and there beneath the house, the bones of song birds—
the marmalade cat’s discarded abacus—
bones of mice, macabre clockworks, both the passage
and the end of time;

shadows: darkened silks of a courtesan’s fan
bones: deep-toned church bells struck in amethyst-light
dust: quiver of a voice-box dredged in desire
time: sweet pickled rinds

the words of this dictionary swimming round,
and in the rooms above, susurrus voices,
the rustle of crinolines, curtains in wind,
a blue sound—distance;

beneath the house she multiplied, subtracted
this blue sadness, she understood negative
numbers, how her life would echo with fractions,
the grief of new math;

she was close to death, breathing in its brightness—
the tiny skeletons resembled cages,
scrimshaw reliquaries, memento mori;
unsainted relics,

everyday flotsam, this blue...