Between tulip and ryegrass
there is a freshly dug grave
I might be five, or four
black soil beneath my fingernails
loss in the hollows of my footprints
Its viscous body is buried in a bottle cap coffin
offered to the earth under flower beds
opalescent snail shells fragmented between toes
and left to heal beneath swollen mounds
Two weeks later
after my eyes have dried
and my feet have been rinsed clean
I pry it open again in commiserate sunlight
just to see if heaven is real
Because I am five
and God is far
but I hope
not so far for a snail