for no one, as none would have it

She’s cutting off her hair, weaving
leaves from memories, decorating Yggdrasil
with people and with plans.

The colors of the present are all green,
only distinguished when dead.
Extinguished, each leaf curls red
or brown, yellowed ochre, firey rust.
As casualties, the brightest are remembered;
but alive, we’re all the same.

She has no need for color in the after,
as the present is eternal, never left until we die.
She is deathless. Tradition-
ally, the present freezes time, and in photographs,
in leaves, in green on every tree
becoming brown in memory
and emulsion, becoming brittle
like old Polaroids, we see
who we might be,
have been, we see
ourselves forever twelve or
twenty-three or half a century.

She pastes each picture on a page,
ties these twigs in leaves,
documents today in every shade
of green. Her older sister
waits with fire, with sharp shears.
Verthandi is impulsive, easy-
going. She can see
that twenty-three is only twelve in darker green,
that fifty, like a photograph,
might yellow at the edges,
but remains a leaf, a life,
a thread wound round a tree.