Untitled Film Still

Cindy Sherman, 1979

A woman. A road.
A suitcase.
Synapses glitter, searching for the rest.

Her body shoulders a hymn called nowhere:
hair a ruff of pale rockwool,
face vanished over bromine hills.

Four blunt pines light blackened candles.
The lake is an eye that returns your gaze.
Her backward arms
are now the roots that clutch
out of the stony waste.

She is the hour at the border.
She is the scar of chance,
a cursed surface
spilling the pure hesitation of a verb.

The future is a landscape
that whispers carry only what you need.
Toothbrush.
Dresses.
Cigarettes.
Something to forget and something to burn.

As the wind stoops silver in the valley,
and the asphalt brushes her feet
                                                               across the night,
she builds a happiness from what lies close,
even if all that remain
                                                               are distance and the sky.