Red maple leaves form a long-tail coat,
hung in the closet of those with the burden of telling

a fabled story: the witch, the warrior, the servant.
She holds the burden in her lap. Bacterial colonies

feed in the wet of her cleaving brain. Petal patterns
open to passing storms: she’s grateful for the self

which betrays her, revealing the stone
skipping at the base of a close reservoir. She listens

to the baby’s cries for three long days before
returning to the well. Little black spiders hatch

when she arrives at misery’s palace to save the baby,
but her hands are too sweaty, the procession

already singing a sad song. She’d waited too long.
The boundary between this valley and that field

had opened at instinct: swallowing claimed ground:
faults of the world, swollen with grief.