Laurie Byro

Artisans

You parted the cool braid
of my hair, it snaked like rain along your shoulder.
Early autumn: yellow leaves laid
a pattern of eyes at our window. Colder
weather would cower them into cones
and we would sit crossed-legged on the bed
each uncurling the other like a fortune teller’s hand. Poems
didn’t hold us as much as time passing. We read
to one another. You told me my hair
was a fragile ladder, we needed to escape
the turbulent green rivers that dared
to take us under. You kissed the nape
of my neck and spun out the coils of golden brown.
We practiced an ancient tapestry, the art form we found.
 

Sudden Death of a Sibling
woman in a group grief encounter

it was in Paris that I knew
what I had to face what he told me
jokingly who dies at 45, right?
alone in Paris I remembered
he said he would send a sign, a signal
because he didn’t believe I did
he did not when I told him how
I’d wake up mornings the old tom cat
would stink of blood and urine from fighting
in the night would jump through
an open window and dive at my warm
sleeping body kneading dough making
bread rise then slink back into the dark
its crooked stars its predatory owls
I’d wake paw prints of blood on my skin
night-blooming roses
but my brother he said you die
you die you become the rich good earth
eventually nothing more no trumpets no
angels in Paris at the Musee d’Orsay
I wandered room to room shell
shocked jet lagged having just
buried my brother I saw a Van Gogh trapped
in an unobtrusive frame and I swear
it was my brother, the likeness of him
staring me down through blue eyes as
I wandered room to room I sent a postcard
to our parents who if they noticed
a resemblance didn’t say I woke up
in a twin bed next to an open window
in daylight, it looked as though
I’d been painted with roses
 

Castle

I am in the abandoned castle again,
your pea coat thick around me, too heavy
and coarse to take wing. I am afraid
to fly. You call me a curious moth, a delicate

bat. Those times we’d sneak off to part weeds,
play house in the eroding turrets where a man
built his wife a castle from solid grey stones.
If I am now a statue, let me speak. You’ve chiseled

every line and curve, cleaved me with the force
of a working man’s arm. You’ve chipped me away;
virgin pieces fall pink to white bone. Shadow mice
scatter and I leap from flame to wild rose.

We’d savor those nights you’d brush soft
plump lips on untouched skin. I’d shiver, follow
a trail of brambles to forage dripping fruit knowing
you’d leave a rivulet of sweet stains down my neck.

Owls would glare at us in the sleep of trees. We’d
moan at them in sex. We were creatures unknown,
barely recognizable. Green thorny arms would clutch
a bouquet of flesh. You fashioned me pretty

with your sharpest tools. The castle burned to the ground
from mice who ran through the forest, the strike-anywhere
matches clamped firmly in their teeth. Each spring, we’d plant
cuttings of forsythia and lilac from a faraway farm.

It was a bruise that had reversed and faded backwards,
yellow to purple. We’d speak of the castle, the bushes
given back to wildness. The spreading flowers
would burst into flames as if to protest happiness.