She sighs,
constantly. Always
the sigh, sighing herself
to wishful elegance,
whisking the whites to rising peaks,
she counts herself backward,

tumbling sighs, sighs
put right in the dryer with shoes
banging around like no one’s home.
She precedes the bride
laying petals of sighs, baskets of sighs
in both of her arms.

She’s baking meringue
with sigh-flavored sugar;
she’s dusting the ledges
with sigh-feathered dusters;
she’s all up in arms
over sigh-smelling mustard,

she’s sigh-knows-where
and getting no closer.