She was not a slender woman, but her skin was milk mixed in with strawberry jam & between her legs the word purple was born & her hair was the color of wheat & yellow bu*ter. Her eyes were dark as the North Atlantic sea. She learned the untranslatable words of dawn. She studied her own fear & wrote its verses. She used the hole in her heart to play wind-music. She built her book-houses over her empty cellar. She nursed on the muse at first, then became her own mother.