Quiet,
please, 
for the 
sexton beetles, 
who lower 
into the earth, 
slowly, 
the remains 
of the little ones: 
field mice, 
shrews, 
sparrows.

An embalming 
of sorts 
takes place:
an antibacterial 
cocktail 
of enzymes
preserving 
the flesh,
protecting
the next 
generation 
of undertakers.  

Look – between 
rush hours, 
upon the public 
works of crows, 
lifting, 
piecemeal, 
the body, 
broken,
of those for whom 
the way 
has been made 
difficult by 
the road:
porcupine, 
skunk, 
white-tailed deer.

I wonder, 
for Simon
the North African
pilgrim — the 
unbearable heft 
of emptiness
after
the cross 
had been carried,
after 
the militia 
took it 
from his hands
as freely 
as they 
commanded 
that he 
take it — 

That night, 
reclining, with 
little between 
body and soil,
it may have been 
that bread tasted 
like ashes to Simon,
that his father 
bade him eat,
pressed a date 
into his palm. 

Rain, if it fell 
that night, 
would have carved
with patience 
through sandstone, 
mud-brick.

And if not rain, 
the wind —
carrying in 
its manifold arms — 
as we all may, 
for each other,
one day,
with unheroic 
footfall and 
clumsy tenderness —
the weight of 
something 
heavier, 
larger than 
ourselves.

Ophelia Hu Kinney is the child of Chinese immigrants. She is a mother, sister, and wife who lives on the land of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Her writing treads the rabbit trails of spirituality, ecology, queer and Asian American perspectives, and the practice of awe. Ophelia’s writing has appeared in The Common, The Christian Century (forthcoming), Geez Magazine, Inheritance Magazine, Unbound Justice, Our Bible App, and at Discipleship Ministries (UMC), to name a few. She was the winner of the NYC Midnight 2020 Micro Fiction Contest.

At The BTS Center, she gets to tell the stories of people becoming more human in a more-than-human world.