It comes to her as a sudden flash
in the final hours of vigil: a blur
of wings attaching themselves
improbably, like some kind of vintage
brooch, to the pleated underside
of a casket lid. Even then she’d learned
to cultivate a skepticism for things
that appeared too sweet, too sure, too
magical— so where did the hummingbird
come from, and what could it mean if there
were room to entertain the possibility
that the soul doesn’t only divide from out
of its own reservoirs of desire? The hardest
part is that both the seen and unseen are also
aspects of language. Does she speak of it,
or does she fold the bird back into
the silence enclosing both of them like
an envelope? And the body, too, of
the beloved. The one that flew away
and left this shape cooling in its box.
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