Not marble, shale, leftover concrete, pieces of a letter
her grandmother wrote the summer before she died. 

An article on the history of Saint Anthony Falls, milling along
the mighty river, grain refined into flour, torn photos revealing explosions 

about to happen between two people unraveling
their love. A chapter from a science textbook on estuaries, 

salt granules strewn across a diner booth table. A slice of ruby 

nagahyde laying on the pavement beside an oversized dumpster,
the blood stain spreading across fertile ground. She places everything side by side, 

doesn’t use a blender. Her thinking is as collaged as a map
of her love life before the end of the cold war—overlaps 

exposed, tale ends hidden, holes carved into the ice, she might go diving
into the river before it thaws all the way through. The need 

to be found has become so acute.