Or so the technician says, wielding
her pearly injectibles in a syringe.

Wearing her crafted features, the Not-I
travels down a parallel corridor.

I dream the bald onion. Astride
a wheelchair, my mother perches

in her corpse. The Not-her
had a facelift years ago at forty.

Her third husband, post-stroke,
drags her along, because That’s what Judy

would have wanted. I manufacture my mouth,
foxes startle—moisture rises from the grass.

We tend monuments to her pretty:
coy in the late 50s, her eyes limpid

beneath black netting, we grant all her wishes,
but too late—. A non-blooming mulberry

clings to its thousand secrets. Trees, gowned
by want, haunt us with the human.