The burned moss is tight on the ground.

Too tight to own its own

shadow. Too long

since the morning's hallway leading down

to the locked room, where green

afternoons stay unseen. I am

what exactly, the woman says.

She won't go back to the room.

*

A moment earlier

with the man's knee bent, the honey

ring's glint,

she looked up, not at him, but at the stone's façade

behind, where rock scrunched, crumbled

under her live gaze. She knew she should speak

but was thinking

robbers came here, marauding

and raping, taking what

they fancied. They fled and she'd like

to flee too, to take what she liked and begone. She wished

she weren't greedy but she also thinks

who's not greedy with time's a fool.

She has seen a creature in the burned moss

and it resembles her,

far more than a kneeling man ever could.

She crouches as the other women walk in slippers,

she waits to watch them

stroll, their hair fall

and shine the outer layer of

a lemon rose. I am so determined

she said to make a

shadow even when

I'm dirt. The man nodded

although he understood nothing.

*

An ant's legs rattle under the leaf 's edge,

onto the moss burned yellow – it's been a hard

summer, though easy for him, who does not

have to bother about fields. She will keep

bothering, liking the fresh breeze

of decision. The window creaks,

open-shadowed trees make cameos

in the reflecting glass.

The burned moss pushes back at the feet and knees

of the woman as she crawls, it pulls water from her

soles, her skin. It drinks. Soon

the man will return with his armed guards

but none of them will find her.

The moss slices itself open

and the woman crawls inside.