Her sorrow rests upon her shoulders;

a Nubian woman’s clay water jug with

red and yellow stripes; always pressing.

It is some living entity dwelling inside.

She keeps it with her like a monkey on

a chain, never losing site of it, aware.

Sorrow was her choice; sorrow is her

comfort, being and love and meaning.

Sorrow has been with her so long, it is

pressed into her tender flesh forever.

She worships the order and familiarity;

knows where to go and who she is. . . 

Sorrow haunts her like a vaporous ghost,

hanging in her shadow, a miasma, dark.

Her empty eyes stare from their sockets,

but she sees nothing to awaken her senses.

Nothing of this world calls her to come in,

as if her cloak soaked up the world in its

wooly, complicated composure, sucking

her soul into its nether-lands of repose.

Each day she sinks further into herself,

letting the pace and song of life lead her.

She desires nothing; believes nothing;

her life a cipher, meaning nothing at all.

Time was when she might have thrown off

her odious burden and danced in the light,

but that time has passed, leaving her as

she is, a mute, desperate sack of bones.