of her linen pants. The yellow pleats sag, slack

at her belly. The weight from a pregnancy

she never lost, perhaps, or the thickening

that comes to anyone, in the later part of life.

Psyche

Psyche

The photos of the boy were taken first

in play, but when one

emerged in the darkroom’s

bath of her son’s back stained

in palladium whip-

stripes like blood, she began

to pose him: the red scarf noosed

at his collar’s

hollow, thin neck bent, one

red thread wrapped

in a cut’s lash

brightening his throat. Ghastly,

she’d tell anyone

who looked, thinking

if she could photograph

such fears they wouldn’t

come true. And so she had

her son submerge himself

as if drowning

in the bath, stand

by the forest’s edge at dusk, his small

shape lost among the white

ash branches. No more,

she told herself, though more

always came to her: the imagination

for pain, it seemed,

was endless. Make me

scared, she commanded

her son, and he did: this boy,

skirting some tragedy

she sensed inscribed

for them both, whose skin

she’d stroked, nibbling

the tears off his baby

cheeks, and once—

kissing the crown of his head

still bathed in birth-blood—

almost tasted.

Had she always contained

such menace? In the day,

her boy was gorgeous,

joyful. But the camera’s

eye caught something

else: the plum bruise blooming

from a spider bite, his teenage

legs stripped, spread bare

on the carpet. How

those plush scarlets flushed

against his kneecaps. She loved

that photo best

of all, the unflinching bones

her camera found, his big feet splayed

as if the ankles

had been broken. How

could she have known his illness

lurked inside except

her camera found it, reached

across time to devour

the just-budded

calf muscles, the long,

lean tendons of his legs?

The sweet spot,

she called her work

when light hit her son

just right. Magic,

her son once said.

He does not call it magic now.

The Wolves

The Wolves

It was the week of asking. Asking

to watch her eat. Asking if she understood

the doctors’ questions. Asking her

to explain the difference again between

wanting to die right now

and dying later.

The tumor making certain answers

unquestionable. I watched her point

to the incense dish from which

someone swept all the ashes up. Asking

if she recognized us. Because that

is what the living want: thinking

it is a sign we have been loved.

But the answer was a summer

drive, a mountain, piles of leaves beneath which

a wolf slept, suckling her pups.

Some deaths are good

and it makes them hard to grieve.

She was, at times, in great pain. We wanted her

to die, too. That was important. But first

we wanted her to remember.

From the bed, a finger pressed

into its pile of leaves. Gray haunch,

unmovable ashes. I didn’t want to disturb