These are the hands to which small things come to die

These are the hands to which small things come to die,

A squirrel with torn leg, a geckoling, a butterfly 

with broken wing- a baby bird that cannot fly,

All come creeping gently up to this heaving chest, 

and lay upon this beating heart

their tired heads to rest. 

For these hands are warm, though eyes bereft of tears left to cry,

so these are the hands to which small things all come to die. 

A terrible thing to bury, 

a baby that you've fed-

So I pluck its listless feathers 

from its tail-end and its head

There's still shit on the deep-green surface

remnants of its last meal, smeared in between

immaculate tail-feathers that now have lost

their sheen. How easy they came off, I think, 

with minimal tug— those ends still stuck

with bits of flesh- food

for ants and bugs. 

And my nose is a world; still strongly filled

with the smells of egg-white-mango-banana-mash and sulfur-shit,

and there in between, the pure aqueous scent

of rainwater flowers, 

soft pink rainwater flowers. 

O my nose is filled with rainwater flowers! 

I've buried a baby— why must I bury

things that were not even mine? 

But I buried it under the white-jasmine vine. 

Why in my hands must I carry

An entire universe, a miniature world—

for just a few hours, then have it returned

back to dust, back to earth, back to dirt? 

For the child may well bury the mother, 

—but for the mother to bury the child! 

— how, all of human suffering, 

encompassed, 

my heart does sing.