Refuge

When I was a girl

the skin on my hands

was iced to the lock

on the tipsy-built barn

where I went to dance alone.

Grown stiff, I saw

the town clock’s hands

freeze to its face in winter:

the dance grooved patterns 
circling dead dirt.

Now I am here, my bedside

clock alarms me from sleep:

the handle slicks clean

when I go to rehearse

in a backstreet studio.