It was Spring  

and the garden became a place  

for good work.

  

She could siphon  

from the stem of one anemone  

to create an entirely new set.

  

It wasn’t quite the “meat leaves”  

the labs were working on.

  

Taking a set of genes from one thing  

and saying now they are yours.

  

Now you are wholly new.

  

It was Winter  

and that meant reading  

Wuthering Heights.

  

Only this time,  

everywhere she looked

  

back of velvet chairs  

lattice of tall fences  

inches of window pane

  

puppies hanging everywhere.

  

She hadn’t remembered this  

from high school.

  

She’d remembered  

“You say I killed you,  

haunt me then.”

  

She remembered “Let me in!”

 

She remembered looking for a quiet place  

at a party one time  

maybe to read, maybe to cry

  

when she opened a door and found  

an elderly grandparent  

watching Cops, cloudy.

  

Unaware of the twenty 

uninvited teenagers flipping  

red cups on the kitchen counter.

  

He smiled as if old friends.  

Asked her to sit so she sat.  

The way lonely sits.

  

When the grandson  

found her  

he was furious.

  

It was Spring again.  

There laid a grimy  

film of green  

over everything.

  

At lunch, the sommelier

put topaz on his tongue  

before tasting the wine.

  

Ordinary things  

made her cruel.

  

A beetle  

kept in a dice box,  

shaken  

in place of ivory.

 

The flowers  

all starting to smell  

like bacon.