Thirteen
The trees wrote their last scarlet notes. 
Silence grew inside me. All winter
my voice felt like a bowl 
of very still water;
 
for hours at a time nothing moved it. 
Here is the house: a table 
beneath a golden light, 
Mother’s closed bedroom door, 
 
a window. Here is the garden.
She wanted to move away 
from us, I knew, 
and I’d have let her. Go,
 
I whispered, but alone, 
while watching a sparrow
splash in a basin of
emerald water, spindly leaves, feathers.
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