Hush. I want to tell you about the queen.

She is the size of a thumbnail.

She lives in a shell the size of my palm.

She has a bed with a coverlet painted on,

a pond with fish painted on,

a horse the size of a grain of rice.
I am six.

The kitchen light comes through the window

the way kitchen light comes through windows

when you are six

and the world has not yet told you

that this is too small to matter.
The world will tell me, later,

that this is a symptom.

A deficit. A thing to grow out of.

That the eye that learns to find

the swimming pool inside the seashell

is an eye that needs correction.
Here is what I am telling you, now.

That eye is the same eye

that finds you across a room.

The same eye that finds the line in the poem

that breaks you open.

The same eye that finds the small thing

that is the whole thing

that no one else has noticed yet.
The queen is still in the shell.

The fish are still in the pond.

The pond is still in my hand

and my hand is still six years old.
If anyone has ever told you

the way you pay attention is wrong,

open your hand.