Almost drowning-

She was spined like origami,
crackling and unfolding into cygnets, cicadas, cirramunds,
things unnamed that ate from the surface of ponds,
then flew.
Caroline could walk through rooms of glass:
bowls and candle-sticks,
table-tops, shelves, columns,
bulbs,
and her harmonics quivered the grain.
Crystal strained to follow,
searched for fault in clear lines,
aching to be touched by one woman's hand.
A turn of her shoulder,
a slip of a white blouse,
they were not the ripplings of tendons
and human blood,
they were the preliminary splinterings
of cartilage,
of her will.
Arias of unhappiness, of growings, screamings,
and rooms falling from dusk to dusk,
these clustered in her shoulder,
and will shatter
all transparent objects to
a haze of opaque dust.

Here is Caroline turning in a room of folds and angles,
before she leaves;
a woman mouthing "forever"
as if it once were personal.

She will break the glass in the frames,
and the bottle, tinted green, will scent of vinegar and cork
as it shards the carpet.
But not with hands,
with movement,
with her internal window splintering,
outward,
away


Caroline breathing air.