she came home suddenly

twenty years she spoke
spare speech
in the desert twenty years
.
wearing white garments
as skin
forgetting
.
the liquid syllables
of home the moist onslaught
of sea wind
on naked skin
.
but when a place is your place
it tucks itself into you
prickingly
.
tattoo ink stigmata
and the ink is alive
.
and your tattoo sleeps it
sleeps then it
wakes
.
and the singing ink
reminds you
.
your place in red ache
is still calling
.
(on the sea wall again
her bare body drank
it drank and she said bless me
for I have sinned)
.
•••