all the small things

Tadpoles nose about, flitting through filthy muck.

The baby tooth in my

palm is a freckle of bone.

Flaked glass slips through heelskin where the wine bottle burst on concrete.

Pin tip, eyelash, catclaw, bugshit.

A blood clot crams shut the capillary;

a brutalizing flood ensues.

She slips on a waterdrop;

she hears her hip shatter.

A bit of broken code,

a few mismanaged proteins:

the child never speaks.

I see the world in a rounded globe of dew.

Saharan dust hoisted

above the drafty plains

drops back down as hail.

Krill in the whale's vaulted gut.

The baby screams in the cathedral.

I see my face

in the black

mirror of her eye.

          The razor presses down,

an edge gently parting skin.       

That fleck of light

you never saw

is a star long dead.