Watch how she unmakes
the body he ignored,
as if subtraction
were a kind of wealth,
or the empty hand
held more than the full one.

She enters that arithmetic
of burning,
and the months lose count of her,
each day a leaf
the season strips
and does not number.

She leaves the palace
to walk barefoot in a forest
that does not know
which ghosts are watching.

Her breath stops
and stays stopped,
suspended
against the wheel
of the south.

Holy men creep close
to watch a girl out-suffer them
and go away unmade.

The heat that leaves her spine
is not a prayer
thrown upward
hoping for an ear.
It will arrive
the way solstice does,
having traveled
the whole long sky to get here,
the way the north star
does not knock.

He feels it now —
the sum of ash and hunger,
proof she can be made so light
she outweighs a god.

And what comes for her
wears snakes,
rains cinder
from the burning-grounds
holds poison at the throat
and will not let it fall.