“Sorry business”

Sorry business, a saying she brought to me
in a lean time, my shadow frozen

in the weak aura of the open fridge.
A lapse in speech was spanned

by the shape of it, a flash of
fit in the keyholes of tongue’s

recall. Now hit, the frenzy,
the failure of the vacuum, the blitz

of hunger. Now struck, dumb before the
closing carcass, the crack of cold

light slipping between split lips. I only
worked over those syllables for a day or so.

They turn to slush so swiftly; this you’ll know
too, if you have ever starved. But the bones,

I am told, are good for other things.
I’m saving them here, for later.