Your sins, random in youth, now interlace
as latticework in time you cannot leave.
You feel the warp and weft secure their place,
a frame that learns your shape by odd degrees.
Branch braided into bone, vine into nerve,
misjoined, yet fastening the life you own—
a blighted map you follow, swerve by swerve,
to hollows cupped beneath the oldest stone.
A scold of jays flutters just behind your ears,
their cries dispersed throughout the evening air;
the canopy comes loose. You stand and hear
your years let go, like leaves, like thinning hair.
The crown gives way. What sang departs the head.
You keep the frame. The body learns instead.