Acacia karroo Hayne (White Thorn)

191 Ivory monastery, you invite retreat, your quills without ink, your needles hollow; you are slow exhalations of whistled breath, both cut and seam, the noteless stems of music a girl scores into her arms; you are the soul’s razored canister. Antennae of many voices, you tune to the milky ships of distant planets, your fray of ghosts without waists, without wrists, a crystalline heart slivered to fossil trails of shooting stars; you are the desert’s drained hourglass, its whittled vanishing, you are the bristling unlit incense of fog and sea froth, your liver-spotted sleeves the stiff papery threads of a petrified fountain, village cookfires’ lingering veil honed to narrow vials, to spines of moonlight echoing the body’s deepest wands, the cuneiform of longing, how you avoided pain by becoming its measure, your starved scepters clinging to anyone passing. Acacia karroo Hayne (White Thorn) sandra meek ...