The sound of my needle piercing linen is

As crisp as a cherry popping forth from red lips

As round as a plum pressed to pink tongue.

I draw pink thread through each wound I make,

Suturing past to present.

The hole of this needle gives way to the eye of a skull, then another.

A hole in the shape of a nose blooms in negative space, a Bermuda Triangle ignorant of scent on the air.

Holes between teeth jut down, down toward a clavicle, a sternum, an absent breast, enfolded in nagajuban and furisode.

And above these pink-tinged bones,

sakura begin to drip down the canvas, thick as molasses and bright as the skin below an eyelid. As optimistic as Brooklyn in spring, sakura pour over the bones.

Who is this dead woman who promenades beyond the grave?

Perhaps her bones are now mine, my flesh sutured to the frame of an island woman who once climbed onto a steamer ship and once climbed off. She would not understand these words.

Perhaps they are the bones of her daughter. Lord give me the grace to forgive what I see in the mirror: that daughter’s cheeks, lips, and eyes. The sad smile of my father. The smirk of my little brother.

Perhaps the bones belong only to me. They are, after all, the offspring of this heavy mind and bloody fingers.

With so little to go on, who knows?

I bless the bones with frothing blossoms in ivory, rose, and scarlet. As with bone, tissue, and blood, sakura live just a day.

Then they rot like memory.