What she strokes to comfort herself.
Hair, pillow, thumb, tongue,
thump, tug and dough: tacky puffs
slick with butter/sugar/yeast.
The reds never wash out.
Naked, she smears paint with her hands.
Blood or wine on the sheets, sings
in the kitchen, beheads scallions,
chops carrots, stirs a nutty roux.
Robert Schumann.
It's the last time she will cry for the poet
who crippled his own hands to improve
his reach. Listen to her now, piano locked
in the basement, spruce and sprung.
All she can do is burn.