What is caged is also kept from us.
"The Three Deaths" "At the sentencing, a snake of pain
roiled inside her veins.
She did not faint or scream or sink to the white tile the way
Alma did.
She stuck her finger in the ripped hole
of her pocket's lining.
She felt inside the wool coat, the nowhere of material,
the black hole of seam and stitch.
She saw his face, blank, borrowed
from the grim bark of a tree.
In Mexico, he told her once, there are three deaths.
First, the one where you learn you will die.
Then the one where you die.
And the last is the last time someone says your name.
She writes his name inside her coat,
and then draws her hand back out.
She will say it until she no longer knows her own mouth.
His name will be her total sum.
His third death will never come."