Dave Bonta takes three fairy-tale scenes and sets them in a hard, modern world of overdose, surgery, and recovery. In the first section, a woman who has swallowed pills lies unconscious while her dog licks her face and then begins to nibble at her lips. The "faithful lover" and "faint half-smile" are darkly ironic: the prince's kiss becomes something animal and horrifying. In the second, she seems to be a transplant patient, checking a small patch of skin each day for signs of rejection. The mirror turned face-down suggests she can't bear to look at herself, and the "phantom embryo" without nose or chin hints at a face that isn't quite hers. The third shifts to the donor's face, which slowly comes alive in its new owner. Surgery becomes a "wedding," and the face warms like a dancer.
The tone moves from bleak and unsettling to something quietly hopeful, though the poem never lets us forget how strange and painful this rebirth is.