“Death comes to me again, a girl
in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.
It’s not so terrible she tell me,
not like you think, all darkness
and silence. There are wind chimes
and the smell of lemons, some days
it rains, but more often the air is dry
and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase
built from hair and bone and listen
to the voices of the living. I like it,
she says, shaking the dust from her hair,
especially when the fight, and when they sing.”
—Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl by Dorianne Laux
