John Biscello

She wasn’t sure how she had become days of mourning.

It began with a pall, a thick viscous scrim

that changed what she saw, sawed herself into

halves and quarters and post-dissection she noticed

days had turned into weeks into months into years

into moths (what was this closet? where had she gone?)

and altogether a knotted bundle

that could not be spent, or misspent,

there was no economy to the quivering mass

of darkening days past, days she had become.

Knowing that escape was both impossible and inevitable,

she returned to the staggered fiction

of nights with no memory,

nights in which days of mourning

factored in little to none

to all.