And yet my heart thumps like applause. But those are painted colors. Only the leaves are human. They are girls. Death and life is their daily work.
Death seams up and down the leaf.
I call the leaves my death girls. The death girls turn at the raggedy edge and swim another length down the veins to the raggedy heart. It's a canker-suicide high. It's a sisterhood. I need to be laid out at last under them, as straight as a pea pod.