Jenny George Writing Sample

The Miniature Bed


A miniature bed, and in it two tiny people
not sleeping, not able to sleep because
a small lie has flowered between them,
fragile as a new, white crocus. 
The miniature bed holds them like a miniature boat
making its slow, true course to morning.
These tiny people, thoughts thrumming like mice,
are quiet as the lie blooms luminous
over them in the night, fanning its moth petals,
becoming to them like a moon hovering
over their bed, a moon they might almost touch
with their miniature hands, if they weren’t certain
that one wrong gesture might break
the spindles of their small world, if their hearts
were not drops of trembling quicksilver,
if they were brave, if they could see
that small is no smaller than big, that thimbles
are deep as oceans for any god, they might even
touch each other then, opening the dark,
like a match the sun’s flaring.