elaine
(a story told in flowers)

i. cornflowers

she wonders softly,
strumming weft and warp as lutes;
no song but her own, and her face
reflected again in those threads.

her tower room is strewn
with half-finished tapestries,
the arras like threnodic corpses,
beautiful in their demise, but done
for a ha’penny’s worth of thought.

chords and threads:
she plays fate, fingering scissors,
cornflower eyes fixed on the mirror
as they cross her stage.
but as the lanterns pass
and with them disembodied wails
she draws her careful curtains
over the chipped-gilt frame.