For days, the air will toss up crystalline ghosts, like rice
at a wedding. Murmurations of snowflakes will
dazzle themselves into oblivion across the conquered city.

In the freshly emptied sky, the birds ascend,
waiting to sprout fingers through their feathers
and stretch out long hollow-boned limbs to become angels.

But the people know where they are. They go out jogging,
trying to cast steady shadows against alabaster abstracts—
they pass by transmutations without pause.

The light-tipped fingers of giants reach up through the earth
where the lampposts used to stand; the people pay
them no mind. Around everything, a thick cotton skin.

What wounds are we, all wrapped together in one big gauze,
tripping over the ruins of sidewalks in a kinder Pompeii?
The wind whips skin into numbness,

roses it red with the ungrieved casualty of feeling.
These bodies shiver in the presence of the sublime.
Not knowing what is possible,

we surrender to what we understand ourselves to be.
This may be the greatest human triumph
or the grief that buries itself in our marrow.

Blank pages unfurl in the place of windows.
Diamonds materialize on lashes. Hell freezes over
and the joggers do not let up their pace.