Allowance

Luisa A. Igloria

Oct 4

(9)    Lights from across the sea or lights in windows;  lights in the vestibule where they kept vigil for one   night, after putting her cremains into a marble urn.  I look at old photographs and in each, chiseled  cheekbones catch the fitful light, touch  the little hollow above a cupid's bow mouth.   After death but before its next ceremony, light  swelled the bones with a parchment sheen. You   could have washed them in a marble basin,  buffed them dry with an old scarf; traced,   with a finger, the ladder leading out of the pelvis  to the heart. That is to say, this is how time lets   our pulleys down one by one, until everything  unwound can be laid flat: on the table, for the fire.