Survival
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There. Houses stood in rows like brown teeth. Once, a woman lit a cigarette and stepped out a window into nothing. I knew her by her body, but left her on the lawn, a heavy patch of shadow, because a road opened in the dust and I could not help myself, being the sole witness among the living who could stoop to pull on one loose thread and watch her brutal, garmented life unravel. O rosary, O boundary one can never cross. Let the threads lie. The night is lapis lazuli, and the spider meticulously weaves out of want filaments so sticky, so light. The orchestra of ancestors tune up, stars nod. New linens enfold me, by and by. [End Page 183]
CALLY CONAN-DAVIES hails from the island of Tasmania. Her poems appear in The Hudson Review, Subtropics, Poetry, The New Criterion, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sewanee Review, and elsewhere. She is a writer who lives by the sea.
