The skin of my mood
is easily pierced.
A dead bee splayed
on a laminate floor,
as ungainly in death as in life.
Carried out into the light,
on the step,
its curled abdomen
cradled in paper, a full stop,
to punctuate the break
between the animate
and the not.
And a bramble cut
stretched across my knuckle
splits wide open
as I watch
a young sparrow at the feeder
eyed by the crow,
the poppies blood red petals
spilled by the wind
and beneath it all an excess
of bile, black bile, rising
somewhere
out in deep water.
