Embroiderer of silk, died of tuberculosis in Ravenna, Italy at age 20. Her skull is currently on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA. I. Frontal Bone if it’s all the same to you: let’s link pinkies and haunt each other always, only as mosaics, only as chiffon puckered/punctured with needles. let’s be ladies, let’s be yeses, let’s be butterflies transmogrified from heaps and heaps of goop II. Ethmoid Bone once you said you’d come home, you’d bake a cake for my birthday but you must’ve forgot instead, you thought, we could kiss a couple of toads thawed out of freezy-mud for a moment i thought about how i would miss you III. Sphenoid Bone so much if this ever ended — this sleepover, this afternoon in the neighborhood where we just drip gold everywhere that’s what you are to me — gold IV. Parietal Bones threads and knotted heart’s-paces you see i think i will spend the rest of my life wishing you could be at the head of every table i sit at. if it’s all the same to you: let me float in your orbit for a little while longer, ok? V. Temporal Bones let me dream of you your missing teeth as you grin against the sunset, against the soft spot where my clavicles meet, against all that consumes us, one way or another, someday VI. Occipital Bone don’t think about that now, ok? just hold tight. my pinky, your smile, you and me and all these sweet things
