childish, shattered blue pottery
rivers and a diversity of children.
to each, their broad shirts and scribbles
for heads, mouths, faces, arms.
winking at me about heaven or nirvana or both. more.
they seem wiser.
i heard that all time is occurring at once.
looking here, i see it all as reflection.
the bright infant depictions hand everything back to me as if to say-
this was this wall. this, was where you sat
and looked into it and laughed your little laugh. see? then all the leftovers-
so soggy, how they dripped off the cheap white plastic. so sad, how
you lived, some others died.
they hand me the truth like their homemade bread in the linen
(this is my body...)

joy, like anything, is born to fragments made more whole.
place your thumb on the ones with the silly chipped paint and buried toddlers’ finger nails,
and remember how both happen all at once.
like a cough.
like a child (yours) letting go of life and then the pillowcase.
like rain and the fireworks.
like all the ways how you can collect someone in your arms and speak to them
about this moment.

here is a construct.
make into a home.

after all, there is so little time.
the children meet at the hands to make a circle. everything all at once.
a pacifism of crayon box hues.
they each confide that they’re the end, the middle, and the beginning.
and one after another,
like green blips on the panels
like god and a pulse, those pyrrhic, incandescent blues
then breakage-
I close my eyes to believe them.
(do this in remembrance of me)