coincident

the old healer dies
weeks after giving me
a picture of Jesus

& taking the blue-
green stone of my
ancestral burden

hand it over, she said

though I’m far
from Christian, I kept
the grainy xeroxed

copy, a photo
of snowcapped alps,
the image of Christ

in shadowed relief,
maybe she was ready
to slip away so

quietly just like that
& it wasn’t the crushing
weight of hungry ghosts

or family curses