Sunday mornings, she would gather eggs,
slipping her hands beneath the white feathers,
biddies murmuring in prayer.

The warm globes felt like hers, the same way
the beauty of shadow on the wreckage of truck
did not surprise her, the same way

the knife had missed her toe –
of course it had – when her brother threw it.
Inside, the blade stood sentry

in the floorboard, witness
to all that she refused to lose.
She knew what she deserved:

salvation, not for good works, but purely
for faith that the world was lovely,
that it held things like starfish she had never seen,

but would, one day, so far from this Missouri dirt
that she would feel she’d lost a limb, remembering
that what we need grows back, casual as scattered seed.