in pollen that coats her pane;
I peer past dirt, past limp lace curtains
to curve of egg-brown chin, barrow ditch
furrows of face, hear snap
and ping of peas shelled at a painted table,
smell the almost musty scent
of over-boiled potatoes and sizzled onion,
spy the flattened pillow,
coarse yellowed sheets on half-made daybed
pushed to the window for breeze.
No aquarium-blue TV light floods the room,
but amber pools where she sits reading,
likely, the Bible, her skin alligatored
as its well-worn leather. She smells of soap
and moth balls. Morning glories frame her door,
greet morning open-faced,
as she does, fold quietly into themselves
come dusk.