The Cloud-Snuggled Girl

Refluxes of spinal memory:
Of synaptic failure,
Inadequate mental reflex;
The strain to match and mirror
What worked behind her eyes
In speed-flitting thought.

Marvelling her
On the cloud-snuggled pedestal
Assembled and etched by me:
Engraved, embossed golden
Doors of the tabernacle, bedded, petalled,
Pulsing…

It does spark with injustice: the tinder
Lighting blue-red, burning my inner ear.
It’s an infiltration – like waking that night
To hear the exeunt of shadowy movement
And the door slam
And then nothing but a protracted sense of
Invasion, grating, tender-deep, falsifying.