I walk without echo, beyond 
harbor riding fourteen daggers 
away from the three cities and down

staircases on some unusual
Thursday. Like any woman,
I am swirl and sharp angled,

a ribcage of nettled need.
The dislocation of my voice
calls back to me as though

I am both Orpheus and Eurydice
without passage or hum. People
become objects, objects become

entangled in a masquerade
of teeth and kinesis. I sage                                        
the rooms and salt the skin

unenterable, unfathomable                               
as the fluid beams steel                                            
me shadowless, in striations                            

of self: half mechanical, half alive,
part muse but never marionette.
I drape the apocalypse in my name.