I have often bent my head
to rest on a pillow, not linen
and feathers, but concrete
and small squalid stones.

Like the breath of
a thousand butterflies,
a little wind has covered
my exposed and tested bones.

My lips have often whispered
in God’s ear, and He has
answered with a bit of stale bread.

Now I sit quietly in corners
listening to the gossip of honeybees,
whose wings are translucent
in an August sun.

I watch my skin grow thin and fragile
as sheets of onion-skin or the wings of moths.

It has been a journey - harrowing
and flush with revelation, leaving me
gaping at the wonder of it all.