Inmate for another month,
my meat house does nothing
to compete against its nature.
What is built cannot be unbuilt—
erosion an act of faith
I put on in colder mornings
when a robe is not enough.
The window is painted
to resemble a window opened
an inch enough to soothe
a sense of the possible,
in which tulips lean toward
the light, the ridges of their skulls
unwed to the graves promised
in their cutting. I open too
for the season, the sea waiting
for its daily bread outside
these shapes, a craving.
I have bought my rot
to its edges, a bitter mouth
my mouth, the month unending,
the end only undone.

Caroline Crew is the author of PINK MUSEUM (Big Lucks) as well as several chapbooks. Her poetry and essays appear in The Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, and Gulf Coast, among others. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD at Georgia State University, after earning an MA at the University of Oxford and an MFA at UMass Amherst. She’s online here: caroline-crew.com.