The bed was wet
with spilled lilies –
white pouring
down
into the stem
like sickness.
You didn’t find a man in the rafters.
You didn’t expect a horse – hung
like an ornament
in the barn
next to a water-logged trailer.
What you wanted to see
was a carousel,
filled with dead leaves,
skeletal horses –
brown eyes
like his eyes –
teeth grinning from red lips.
Then the barn
and the tent
the line of ceramic elephants
would make sense
beneath the tree – the pruning body
the sea of cockroaches.