Your father betrayed me with the composure
            of leaves, accretion of desire in cells.
     Snowy twilight on peaks was nothing 
            to his wastrel beauty. Some things he shattered
     I still recall as though they were whole:
a narrative of well-read romance,
            a bowl my sister made perfect from flaws—

minute spheres of oxygen caught
            and baked in the glaze reappearing, punctured,
     as delicate craters. When he struck
            the back car window with a brick, its faint
     green safety glass became a giant sand, 
an awkward salt cut fine enough to season
            every wound we drove toward and through.