There are stars
on her hands and her lake
absorbs my fingers, peeling skin
from my bones, and my blood
sinks into the silt at the bottom.
She plays her funeral
march on my arm, plucking
the tendons, a calming
and organic pizzicato.
The white fishes play
the wind instruments,
hollow reeds and gasping lips,
and they nibble on my fingers
and blow on my bones, pushing
their whistles and shrills through
the marrow. I make a deeper
sound than the wind through the reeds.