Paradise Lost

 
It was at once that I knew I was magnificent 

As magnificent as the threadbare wings crowning the archangel's shoulder blades

As he bends and stoops and wrenches his spine toward the lowly planet Earth

Where millions of insignificant moments overlap into miraculous frames of existence that glitter against their decontextualized backdrop 

Down here in the muck and the mire it's important you know that Chrysanthemum can be a name or a flower and a dung beetle holds as much gravity as a failing patellar tendon

Snap snap snap snap crackle pop down the sidewalk past the place where a prepubescent girl tripped and fell onto her front teeth

And picked them up off the cracked concrete with one fell swoop of her open palm – 

Gripping them hard where life line meets heart line meets thumb webbing and feeling the jagged little angles of bone white enamel 

Now biting into brand new-to-them flesh. Lips sealed shut over the two gleaming openings, nerve ends (or beginnings!) and all, she

Breathes through her nose the whole way back to her parents, not crying, not screaming but gliding like a shadow tooth fairy who is desperate

To reconstruct and make whole what was suddenly broken loose. Rigid, but calm, so calm. She bestows her magnificence. Handle your shit. No whining. No talking, even.