It is 6am, winter. Daybreak
washes the empty roads with lilac.
A wolf crouches on the doorstep;
the cold patience of his blue eyes.
Inside, rose shadows flicker
onto marmalade walls. Amber
sees stories in the flames,
licks woodsmoke from her fingers.
She leans back. Apricot hair
pours into the gourd
of her mother's honeyed hands
to be brushed into submission.
Soft shock of static satin sends
gold crackle skeins onto the hiss spit
of logs as her mother weaves
and welds her hand held hair
But Amber is thinking
about the wolf,
how he waits for her, and
how she cannot breathe
in this peachy swelter, how it
makes her sweat and shrink
from shelter. Christ! if she could only
drink the ice cool lap of his eyes
