the heart’s filament and gauze.
White scaffolds of bone
bridge the dark water of nothing
doctors have power to see inside.
They have power
in the shining dark machines,
the silence they force on mothers
who sorrow for the internal stitches
and seams of children.
Her ribs are small wings.
Why is it her still hand
reminds me of war again,
of the five-fingered piece of land
with bare trees and carbon silhouettes,
women brushing their hair on walls.
The humming plane
that dropped such destruction,
Enola Gay,
was named for the pilot’s mother.
She weeps in her pillow at night
nightmares of children
lost to power.
This is what lies between us and death,
a hospital door, light
that touches a tired woman.
She folds paper into white birds.
They fly
over the vast landscape of madness,
passing through the black and white
revelations of bone.