You found them on window sills, swept
          into corners—a cricket’s husk, a moth’s
                    kite wings, a gecko stripped of its tent

of skin. Exposed to air the little corpses
          had a sad air about them—naked, forlorn,
                    so you placed each one in a matchbox

pilfered from the kitchen drawer
          next to the old stove that burned
                    with a cold blue flame. When you lifted

the moth from its plank, the stiff
          wings dusted your fingertips, like gilded
                    edges of a Bible’s pages, and the cricket—

shell of song—cracked, dry as a syllable.
          Touched by death, you brooded upon
                    the clean mechanism of the gecko’s jaw,

the tenantless eye sockets’ gaping
          vacancy, and heard a strange music,
                    clicking in hollows of the dreamless skull.