A Question

The woman in the building across from me

hauls onto the fire escape a yucca plant

and squeezes it between a crate

of herbs and a sapling fern tree.

She looks a lot like me from twenty feet away.

A forelock lies sweaty against her cheek

as if she’s forgotten to fix herself.

I put my thumbs and forefingers

to my eye and frame her. I am reminded

of those Chinese boxes made of red paper,

inside one is another holding another,

until at the center sits the tiniest mockery

and celebration of the cell itself.

She looks haggard but happy here, five flights

up, bending over a fat leaf as if admiring herself

in the waxy surface. Then she opens up

the jewel-case of her voice,

and I remember how once my sister asked

my mother which one of us sang better.

My mother paused from sewing as if adding

seventeen to seventy-five and said we sounded

the same. Good or bad, who knows.

Each of us now watches the empty,

open mouth of the other.

Source: Empire (University of Arizona Press, 2011)