Whether it was a great aunt’s sunflowers
copied from van Gogh and given pride
of place in the living room of her duplex
on North Freeman, or the paint-by-number
dogs left hanging in the pine-paneled
basement after my grandmother died,
I noted, as a child, only the fact
of their existence. Even as a young woman
I viewed them as stray clues to a trail gone cold:
the table lamp made from glass marbles baked
until they broke to shatter light like water.
Now, I do not doubt my ability to read truth
in fragments; the explanation of desire
renews itself, if you let it, like good blood.