Amanda Daly

I made you,
built you
out of lime,
hydrolyzed you,
made stiffen members
on the verge
of collapse.

After all,
I have been taught,
taught how to make things,
how to build things.
Is it possible that you
are a thing?
I might have cheated you
into being a man,
a woman,
a spirit.

I made you,
let you dry out,
made strengthen
a failing crossbeam here;
a pillar there,
that one,
the Corinthian beauty
with cracks stretching
around a body,
pitch-black ivy—
forming an intricacy
with which
your capital
cannot compete,

cracks stretching
and s t r e t c h i n g,

inhabited by termital-
like larvae where a
soul should be.