the fossil record
<<22>>
The Travails
They welcome
you
back,
scarred, scuffed brown
as leaves piling at curb
and
porch.
They have no reason
for
being
except perhaps in memory
where one looks back,
sees
the self
dressed in a hospital
legs
dangling
off the flat cot
where the tortures
happen in deep sleep.
They hound you
like the seasons,
one on the heels
of the
other . . .
Judith Skillman