Quaker Lace

Tea party in celestial spheres. Plastic princess wands. Click metallic gems on Velcro, stick

to long hair. Jelly slippers squish in translucent glitter. Sparkle. Barbie dolls lounge next to folding swimming pools

dressed in white lab coats and ballet shoes permanently stuck to their feet.

It’s there

I meet him. Eating up my dreams with jangling player piano key teeth. Yellow bones rattling until marrow spills onto a little girl

tea cup set. Hot pink. Lavender flowers floating in the green ether. Quaker Lace tablecloth. Pour from the rounded spout

of a swelling pattern tea pot. Here’s what I know. Spindle fibres divide.

Cells build up. Slow twitch fibres release.

There’s a blueprint in wolfy eyes.

Beatrix Potter. Bunnies wearing blue jackets. Geese in bonnets. I’m being held;

listening to his heartbeat. Tucked on the inside of elbows. My arms hidden against his chest. Conversation

swallows all the gnosis. Jane Eyre on a Manx beach. Books in binding, thick pages smell of language. Carries the weight

of heavy black ink. I hear a girl in class explain how there’s a term for a telepathic connection between two

people. Beyond mere coincidence. Let me come in. Coyote slow trots across the road bending over vanishing marshlands. Cow-pats

covering the land. Soon they bring orchards instead. Rows of golden red apples tumbling to the earth in the Okanagan autumn. Infantry lines scarring

the hillsides. Palmistry of otherworldly invaders. Tail down, fur canters before the mouth of a roundabout. Lopes in longer strides, shoulder

stretching under lips and fangs.