women are woven

constructed in clay, feathered in layers of deep texture. thread count high, it always seems. even when it's low, it feels perfect as cashmere on water worn hands and hangnails; when a strangers touch is staunch bleached cotton, her's remains a fresh bath of lotion, painted with worn-in childhood soft. my boyhood blanket and pillow, with matching yellow bird print, can compare in puffiness but not in symmetry the way she's put together. the head moves in cement while the heart sends a postcard, captures her gouache on recycled wood. oil paintings sit on the floor, fallen from nails. her weather pours down upon these arranged and canvassed elements and they start to bleed onto fabric. each fiber moves slightly. once dried, the tiny long flexible cylinders are thus changed, more tense, starched. the differences in localized color and shade forms shape and picture; i can only sense heat and breath, and the differential to which my blood can thus be magnetized.

i peered at a fat baby, at work, yesterday. instead of the usual aloof, the little one looked at me through engaging eyes, omniscient, it sized me better than i it. the father had a funny yet smart mustache, the mother was beaming.