I saw the Spirit walking in her frame
when I was but a “skin-flask in smoke.”
The walls yet boards and cut-outs
of the still-frame life still “yet-to-be.”
She, actively, balancing on scaffolding,
the vision of my “future-self,”
beautiful on-high. And I, sad,
a draft-on-paper-bones looking longingly
to her to hear from heaven and descend.
I made a bed of sawdust
and love-lies-bleeding seeds
underneath the open rafter beams
and imagined, from “up-there,”
appearing a two-dimensional portrait
of unfading self-preservation,
not-quite-as-yet depicting
the softness of “still-life.”