She’s seated at a table on the back porch
picking stems from a bowl of cloudberries—
those gumball sized, hairy, nearly translucent
yellow berries one imagines Bosch,
as demiurge, being driven to invent
as prisons for his naked sensualists. She’s

a little drunk, again, but it’s past noon,
she’s on vacation, and trust her, you don’t want to
lecture her on this; you don’t understand,
no one does, how his betrayal—No one.
A yellow-jacket hangs from her left hand.
She smiles, whispers to it, You love me, don’t you?