She’s been here before, brushing her palms against the grass

feeling only the distended thoughts that barely govern her own body;

there is a dazed reverence to the sun on her cheek

as if she had been purposely arranged in the field

with the hydrangeas and the broken stalks of milkweed.

She flares her nostrils. My breathing,  she muses,

is like a ball of thread unraveling to its invisible essence

or a cloud waiting to take shape.

Meanwhile, the sun consumes the afternoon

with an economy of self.