childhood

In Childhood by Kimiko Hahn

things don't die or remain damaged but return:
stumps grow back hands,
a head reconnects to a neck,
a whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic.
Later this vision is not True:
the grandmother remains dead not hibernating in a wolf's belly.
Or the blue parakeet does not return from the little grave in the fern garden though one may wake in the morning thinking mother's call is the bird.
Or maybe the bird is with grandmother inside light.
Or grandmother was the bird and is now the dog gnawing on the chair leg. Where do the gone things go when the child is old enough to walk herself to school, her playmates already pumping so high the swing hiccups?