Every day.
She has to check daily.
Call me on the land line.
See if her world has changed.
“Are the flavors the same today?”
(All of my safe favorites still there?)
I nervously reply raspberry is now coffee.
The tiniest quake shivers her cheerful ‘ok’.
When she arrives in wide white tooth smile,
starlets gleaming in sky tan framed platinum,
a quiver tremulates pout-lush berry fleshy lips.
She forms turrets rather than swirls circles;
soft, firm, frozen layers sweet comfort most,
aligned to spun circadian rhythm, but not hers.
She builds towers tall enough to see over the walls
she maintains securely protecting hers and her own.
All colors should reach beyond the brim, peak and peer
over the fortress, showy containment, before consumption,
her life’s patch-quilt texture sewn so tightly no thread strays,
not an inch, and the pared tan arms and legs, plumped bone, lay
testament to the sacrifices she makes to keep a world’s seams intact.
In the gaze of the other 