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32 Fugue I was born in a blizzard in the vault of a clavier. My mother’s ribs were icicles, the wind a compass of octaves, even her pulse a prelude. Skimming the frozen meadows I learned the flight of night swallows, licked stars from the snow. This is how my bones grew. Eight winters old I began to bleed, sealed the chalice beneath the keys— my daughter’s hands bloomed edelweiss. I taught her to twine the diatone through the carpals of her wrist— she was my organ, I her voice. She at the pedals with hammers and nails: a cross composed by counterpoint. I recited the passion in sequence because mother favored baroque, drank teas of birch bark, alpine rose to drown the sound of wolves. Sheared my graying hair, wove it through the strings because I wanted to arrange my immaculate death. 33 When I tied stones, like bells, to my ankles and dove into the Danube my daughter heard a requiem. It was winter. She did not find me for days: face-down on an iced-over harpsichord, plucking scales from my mother’s tongue with my teeth. ...

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