he said, "oh, my talking bird"

it's like i'm the one in that basket, dangling from a crane a million feet off the ground. and you wouldn't even know to look up at it, point at it, exclaim the horror of dropping your body from it.

you wouldn't even know to hold the hug for three and a half seconds more.

you've helped me become the girl who walks around with balled fists in front of her face. not avoiding sugar or harmonies. avoiding shorts. and definitions. tossing shoelaces and Aces and hard-candy wrappers into the recycling. into your hair. into a monument. foreshadowing every syllable and investigating the shallowest release of breath. the rise of one finger.

sweeping him, and him, and him, from my doorstep with a wicker broom.

you've helped me perfect my indigestion, my fog, my unpalatable tone. and like craftsmen, we've assembled landscapes and operas, and towns with neighborhoods with cabinets with cupboards bound like molasses.

it's nothing like you say

"what will you remember about me?" she said.

"i'll forget everything," he said.

"about you, i will remember not to have a hot dog and go swimming, not to touch your ears, not to eat whatever you cooked, not to get old, not to call, not to use a napkin, not to wear jeans under a dress, not to buy souvenirs, not to listen for train engines, not to drink watered-down drinks, not to press the off-button, not to join the army, not to expect the unexpected, not to lose an egg shell, not to be a witness, especially to this."

orange glowworms indicate a southeast wind

her hair is darker now, and her eyes more olive. she smells like bread dough and carries a pan of hot oil in collected hands, on her bike. it is a promise and she shushes the tornado warnings, surprised that she's not surprised. gulping honey-nut cheerios in her window frame, chirping like a bird at the birds.

he's doing backbends in her hippocampus. cadging for the chance at the sight of a starfish. to feel its wiggle under his desk. he might not be, but he probably is. nudging for all the specialized print. like the bus driver's smile when he, too, notices the pizza-delivery man in a space suit.

they are chromatic and tangled. endlessly distracted by moths caught up in the disco ball, above can lights and shells computing shadows on worn pictures of jesus. the last supper scooting back to sea.

you finally found the center piece of the puzzle, under the refrigerator

"this is a fact," she wrote, on the interior of a bubble envelope, and then posted it.

"i am in love with the pockets of a city."

"a curving mass of watercolor pavement, all grace."

don't let them eat cake

scenes from behind a mumbling wall. it feels like georgia and smells like lemons. she's drinking absinthe under the radiator in her bathroom, thinking about how it is april, and she couldn't be more silenced by the christmas tree in his doorway. the nature of the determined tack in his hair. the night after the night after next month. the three wise men. the witch hunt.

doing cartwheels up the stairs for him. whispering to an immortal plant, scratching at the glass.

she wonders if she focuses on her bruised talus, trunks stroking the side of the house, the critique of metaphysics, the hush of bumblebees, the inseam of her dress, the rotting wood, or the fox tail, she could unload the torn siding, the pine, the tractable boat parting this icing.