Someone I can’t remember who told me
how to fold into a bird. It made no sense
at the time but now that I am sitting in
this sunlight I begin to understand the way
an arm might one day flatten to a wing
if beat down hard enough, creased and pierced
and strung with beads pretend they’re
feathers. Yes, I can imagine taking flight
right through that window. Probably at first
the jagged edges of glass would hurt
as they slice through skin but the blood
will drip away as my pretend wingspan flumes
higher towards these tallest trees, the ones
hovering above the roofline. Listen, I say,
I’ve been having bird dreams my entire life.
In fact, I think I’ve written this precise poem
on a shitty desktop with a mouse and a hum
and a floppy disk while sitting in a portable
classroom. I was in high school, remember,
I was so entirely broken. Really, I was incredibly
sad. I’d sit in the sun wishing I was someone
else. Had you told me then how to bend
every piece of myself into something other,
I would have snapped each bone in my body
to reconfigure. And then I would have kept folding.
Where’d she go, you’d wonder at the osseous
pearl perched in the doorway. I wouldn’t answer,
of course, my voice now furled and forgotten.
Thank God I didn’t know you then, whoever
you are, folder of things that shouldn’t be folded.
