The velvet's unraveling a
little, the way petals
toward the end flop open
like an old sick woman's

thighs, no longer worrying
about modesty. The threads
fray, a paler color on
their own like skin peeled
from a finger. the woman

who stitched these shoulders
in China in a basement with
no window or light felt
her life was that shrivelling
skin. When her husband took

their daughter, she wanted
her heart to turn leathery,
wanted to be the red cut off
a fruit and thrown into the

highway. It was a girl she
told herself, we couldn't
keep her. At first she
bundled the velvet, rocked

it close to her like a child
at her breast. On the dampest
days, a stickiness near the
buttons, faint smell of milk