Mrs. Dalloway

Wayétu Moore

If she were not born human she would have been a panther with steel paws and brick for flesh she would have licked over them black lips and whiskers when her gut overflowed when a catch beckoned or when she wanted to fuck. If she were not born human she would have been a hunter that shimmied about thickened masses of branches that dug their own roots and a priestess queen of an elegiac jungle where mocking birds fed her songs she swallowed and longed for nothing.

But Mrs. Dalloway was born human.

Grey with hunched shoulders

Mostly wrinkled and drowning

Searches the duchesses’garbage

For relics and recognitions

Of a past life

Haunted silhouettes

Dancing gowns

Mountainous regrets

Tragically unloved.