…cardamom and clove. Incense smoke from an empty candy tin, pile finger width ribbons the colour of bone. The dead outside her window are wrapped tight in burlap, stacked as cord wood, blessed by garlands of posies. Blind eyes are painted on the funeral hoods with leafed fools gold…

She sits at the table and reaches out into the cold, removing with care, from her robes, the threadbare pouch of her mother’s dominoes. She lays the ivory out with a practiced sway. One snap, two snap, three snap, a batch. 6/4 -2/3 - ought/ought. The platinum teeth of her blackest pact. Rosemary….