Did you read her letters
about the garden? Not yet?
You should; they shed
considerable light
upon her state of mind
in the months leading up to
the whole nasty business.

In May, third week,
she wrote about her garden,
and it’s quite telling.
She can’t wait for the carrots
to come along;
she wants to pull them
out of the ground and
lick them clean,
sharpen them
she says,
then use them for something
that frightens her:
swords maybe in a desperate
stand that nobody wants,
least of all she.

I hear them
the evil ones
they whisper behind the trees
at night around the house
they are coming,
she says, underlining the word
with force that breaks the lead.
She has tried to wipe away
the tiny spray of graphite
from the page:
smeared fingerprints bloom
down the side of the page.

Her final words
almost indecipherable:
they have no eyes
but see me better
in the dark
the only hope
she scribbles over the word
and writes chance
is to chop off their wings

investigators found the note
in the crib inside a cornhusk baby
shaped by multiple twisted
roots and braided strips of basswood,
surrounded by shards of broken carrots.