My left lip
Still longer than the right, but
Women can't see their sex,
They say, as men can't see their hearts.

These walls of a thousand and one secrets
Descending, not upending,
Plaster filled with flowers and snakes,
The clicking of chaff
Indiscernible from writhing:

And nothing left now,
No works nor words surviving
But these light tattoos on my skin,
Stalk-lines tracing
Not up and down,
Grabbing toward the suns
Or shrinking from wind,
But in.