almost an island

dank sets into your limbs
like deafness,
sedentary.

your arms lock across your chest,
a boulder, a barricade,
a levy of sandbags against a colony of words.

they forage, they breakfast, they break bread
their children speak Yiddish; smoke curls from their chimneys

mutinous, they befriend the cerebral

and with a quake, your dry lips part.

you are almost an island,
but you are a woman.