I/ Self/ Woman in Berlin
        1930

I wake, put on a silk slip, a wool skirt, and cut

past the building bombed to rubble

in the war. Ruin sculpts the air,

moth holed, like the medieval castle

without a roof I played in as a girl.

The treasury prints more paper.

My purse thickens. I sit at a table

and type—and last night's gin

tastes like mulberries on my tongue.

My pulse at my temple flickers

like a copper butterfly,

and the moist morning

feels like another mouth—her

lips startling the back of my neck.

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Copyright © 2022 Tyler Mills All rights reserved
from City Scattered
Tupelo Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission