At night, I leave all the lights on in my head.
This way, I know the dead can find me.
Sometimes they toss me their worldly trinkets:
the moon, wobbly as a child’s loose tooth,
a tuning fork, a spear of lightning for my song.
Like a magpie, I collect them.
I line my own death-nest
with the baubles of the dead.
Nothing, not even death, can harm me.
​
Requiem with an Amulet in its Beak, Elizabeth Knapp