Shining Cuckoo
Remember the time you told me about the meaning
behind your hummingbird tattoo?
How intently, and seriously,
we took each other then
With silence comes space
that confuses the memory
The cuckoo is different
It is nasty, and not many know this
And yet we use it to tell the time
has come to make new friends
Look at the way I froze after you
left me with so much left unsaid
Look at the way they’ll find me
in museums. Looking whole
as though you’d never broken
me into tiny pieces.
Blue
You remind me
that I was
with my back
to the world
deaf to your lament
Listen, you said
listen to me.
Then you were silent
as though my attention
was all that your wanted.
I listen to your fingertips
trace a path, waiting.
The weight lifts
with blue.
Cold as this room
December has been kind
I look underneath it
shadows drop, never
really there.
Draw a pattern then,
escape with your weight
upon me, as I lean in.
Listen, I said
listen to me.
Moa Egg
look how it moves
clumsily
how it moves me
with its slow reluctance
to be in the same space
with me
how it never turns its back
but never looks directly
how it protects its space
nonchalantly flapping
there is a nervousness beneath
its wings, like a mumbled song
a hurried prayer, escaping
how it flits and furrows
filling a space almost smaller
than its entire body
how it prepares to lay an egg
furtively
trying to place it where i cannot
how it closes the air around itself
zipping the molecules
shut
