Small Change

she dies quietly. no songs. no flowers. every day a barter. of strangers and suicides. a choke of resistance. a thunder of humility. the color red. deep in the path. tethers and veins in an economy of flesh. lies and wolves and empty pages. the blue dominion of ghosts and orphans. a mortgage of surrender thick with the debt of change.

small doors. swivel the light. tease the journey. detours in contrition. wear her in thick drapes. cold windows. fetch the dark. in decimals and halves. portions of when. fractions of who. fetid gods audit their heavens.

faces like dominoes. fingers like syringes. tumbling. no cure. no medicine.

a circus of skin. full of clowns and acrobats and animals.

a little bit of death in her pocket.