Life Lines
By Jennifer Yaros

A glance in the mirror tells me this morning’s

newspaper has already yellowed. I’ll read it anyway,

drink coffee from a cream ceramic mug lined,

fractured by thin strands of once lustrous russet

hair. I grab my scratchy grey cardigan, notice

buttons hanging from threads, eyeballs pinched free,

squeezed from sockets, bobbing on spidery veins.

I can’t see the air now salted with moths, buff-colored,

hungry for more wool, more soft tissue. They want

to fly in and through rattling bones, until they too

resemble ash – or moisture, floating. My warm breath

steams the chill window as insides of marbled clouds

growl overhead. Ivory lightning strikes, again, again –

exposes critical fissures in giant glass dome plunged

first in hot, then cold. I’m afraid light might leak

from the sky, even the sky, to a ground abounding

with wet brown leaves, collecting yoked life lines

of a colossal rounded palm, holding me. Joining

lips to hand, I blow kisses so old they drift like dried

petals, flake the way paint does from ancient artwork

rotting in untouched ruins – still alive, we breathe.

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