She never spoke
but sang to me
and blew into her hands.

Whatever she hid there
I never knew.
Cupped in the hollow
like a small flame kept alive.
Bent over it
to see heerself
mirrored in the dark.
It glowed like embers
through her fingers,
but I never knew  what it was.

A bird, I wondered,
or a winged bug,
and whether its shadowy light
meant it had flown away.

Until one day,
opening her fist, she showed me
a  burned-out cinder,
a tiny corpse of self.