And straightway the damsel arose, and walked… and [he] commanded that something be given her to eat.

Jairus, whose name means

“God will awaken.”

Softly: his daughter.

Softly: night’s

passage. Fever holding

her throat in its teeth.

She sweats.

She dies before Christ arrives.

Now his words pull her up

by her tongue.

Warm thing. Delirious

hunger. She blinks.

Touches her belly

and groans

feeling again

need twist its bulk through

what had been emptied.

Need, which fattens

until even death is shed. Slaked. Shaken

off. As when a bear trundles up

from three months of slumber.

Dips snout to dirt

and begins again.

Fork. Knife. Oil and sugar.

Lamb. Wine gasped down—

these slipping into,

filling up—these

the instruments of her return.