Is it the eight titanium pins around my knees or the fact

that for three months

the incisions were left open? I grew

to know that plush of inside— the velvets, the iodine to prevent infection,

the smooth of body cast like another girl who was exactly

my shape, but calmer than I would ever be.

She lay still, barely shifting, like a vase holding a flower,

which was me with my hot dangers, my itchy despairs.

In the myth, the girl who is Spring only gets her power when she chooses the mask of bone.

I did not want the world to be this way.

For weeks, I stared at the dull view out the window of alleys in moonlight, a few sunken garages,

a dirty-white cat. I stared until these things became beautiful again.

Something closed inside me, which glinted like a sharp bright pin.