She does not capture one
of the twenty seven bones
as she reenacts our shadow puppets
against the ironwood floors
at this time of morning, her bird’s eye
angle is no x-ray, no stranger to ambiguity
but the shapes she makes
on walls and granite counters and painted cabinets
are the same shapes that have
picked up apples from street corner vendors
and been able to discern them from the carrots and the pears.
They are shapes that have folded cotton shirts
and held other shapes like them
even though in shadow there is no evidence of touch or containment,
but there is a thing we believe in
called illusion
which cannot be felt—only witnessed
and doubted.
She can make our hands into snakes or cars
or summer watermelons, she takes away the things
that have made them hands,
removes the railings and catches so there is
nothing familiar to grasp,
no musculature, nothing to define them.
The sun misses the moons on our fingernails
and she cannot see how many times they have been in orbit
or that she is making realities unreal.
Given light like this
through kitchen windows and stained glass,
we would rather rely
on the incompetence of shapes
than the uncertainty of our own skin in darkness.
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