I do not like to love 
a thing that goes.
Everything goes.
For a long while
I wouldn’t visit the niece
with hips she’d made slim enough
to force a father’s glance
to fall away. 

Forced now into a room 
with family, she skitters, mute, 
eyes, sunk into her face like votive 
candles nearly spent, glassy, 
lit with panic.

The first time I saw 
her smallest version
of herself, I could only nod
and press a twenty-dollar bill
into her hand,
though I admired her resolve, 
firmer than mine,
to say nothing, to leave.
It seemed something

pressed from her eyes
in too rich a distillation, and my eyes 
teared involuntarily because 
I didn’t embrace her,
didn’t want to be the child
who pets a wild thing to death.

At night, troubled hungry, 
I move down the hall
past the lasso of lamplight 
dropped over her shoulder,
a moth thrumming madly
against the shade.

She sketches at her desk.
She looks up as if listening.
She has not seen me.
Her heart may fail her.
My heart may fail her.

I look away.
I won’t keep watch 
while she goes on 
with pinched face,
erasing, erasing.