After the first death there is a shrinking.

Miracles to fit in a spoon.

The sun rolling crazy and free as the wheel of an old baby buggy.

The patchy macaw in the children’s zoo dipping his giant beak up and down, up and down, merely to amuse.

The God of Trash flinging himself gaily to the sidewalk.

Death?—but it was only a piercing, the fleeing thread through a needle’s eye,
or the shy escape of steam that coalesces
on the nearest cold surface.

After the first death there is stillness.
The gaps of night between street lamps.
White pinched flesh between tiny stitches.

After the first death there is a pause.

And then the second death: and a pause.

And the next death, and
the next.

Thimble-sized miracles, shrunken wise
as your soul.