Bone and Hue

There was a young woman

who lived in her shoes.

Bare-backed, she sat

with elders and sheened

her nails with sloe.

Felt purse, trunk,

berries in bottled gin.

Smoke rose

from the purples of the ground.

Moscow maybe next, or

Poland, where the numbers burned.

Purples of the mosses turned.

Some million shades.

Six million more.

Purples of the mosses,

and all the millions, blue.

She had so many lives,

she didn’t know what to do.