Wind Tunnel

Before that storm, before the final language,
they said she would know silent and empty places
with side doors snidely open, a smell of cutting tools
in warehouse air. They'd lost the use of others when clouds
descended, told her she was on borrowed light now,
enough to read pebbles by, enough for feet to follow this mash of leaves flushed with fox-fall as far as the river. It was a pale arrival, a chant of reed women folding sounds as if they'd never hear again. How many remembered the bright script of her lost hair, all the tweed they'd waulked to give her words, the way her eyes blued when stories spoke deeper than her ears. Wind was harshing across shattered water, distended, distorted. Her skin blew first, tissued out to trees and further still, her thoughts were gentle absence. From factory floors, people saw only cloud funnels torn apart, a usual storm louring.