I hide the Shaker postcard in the textbook,
its speaker with her back to us.

Imagine. Every color in the room
the various colors of hosiery.

You have found, grey, the woman,
her cloak covering her hair,

a photograph in your book,
sand, the basket on the bureau.

You tell the story
where her hands are, chiral,

reaching, her left never to be
superimposed over her right.

Tell how it came to be
sable, the floor, her ankles showing,

this postcard with this woman,
gray, the portrait on the wall, its frame

with this mirror concept and a stern woman,
darkened even by the speaker’s shadow,

a window somewhere, the speaker’s orientation
ash, reversed.

I have learned to traffic information
in isometry, the transformation

that does not change the shape
or size of a figure, as in this

reflection of the speaker on the wall.
You see something so still in a window,

dark with a kitchen light behind the shoulders,
and you want the shadow to give itself away.

You’re terrified. What you know must be human
still doesn’t move.  You cannot tell

if the speaker’s a real woman,
or wax.

You have the tone of a mind reader
who has no trouble with the uncanny,

no deliberations over the machinations
of the soul.

You write,
I found a picture

in my Geometry book, 
and the woman is sad.

She’s searching the drawer
 for a memory.

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