Cold Water

I wash the clothes of the dead
with cold water

And hang the pale linen
from heaven’s blackest star

It drips a silence
stitched like wounds
of memory

There’s a dead bird
in your throat

its wings folded around
your voice

I don’t ask whose blood this is
or why it won’t come out

I only rinse
until the water clouds into a crimson sky

and let the stars
mistake which are still bleeding