There is a long window that doesn’t open
overlooking the parking lot. In its
recess, a black leggy thing, weightless
and still, lays on its side. It is
to fly as the thing in the bed is to
my mother — holding only the shape
and none of the spontaneity. She too is
weightless, buoyant in the heavy air,
adrift in familiar halls — fourteen
disbelieving eyes stare at a shucked husk.
