Coda

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when you left, the hours

circled like galaxies

in our washtub

I stripped the doors

so they had open mouths

but couldn’t speak

where you hid

a trelliswork of scarves

silk-screened with la calavera

catrina I folded myself

into a fox-faced bat

to neutralize the dark

you used to say every man

carries an irrefutable argument

for his own disarming