Yesterday I understood why some people walk away
from their lives, lives strung out
from peg to peg, stretched taut or sagging from use.

I felt everywhere the pinch of spring-type wooden
clothespins. At every joint, at each
vertebra, oh, I was dead meat, hung out to dry.

Then I walked through a corridor of white,
sunlit, blind, my fingers guiding me
along cool, damp cotton

breezy with forgotten childhood, nuzzling the light.