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All of a sudden there was a bird on the ground, and nobody knew how it had died.

A swan, swan plucked from the silver skies by a hand—

hand weathered from picking the blood-soaked roses from the garden—

and tucking them behind the piano for lost lovers to find.

A pigeon, pigeon tumbled from muddy rafters—

watching the old men vomit whiskey-stew in the alleyways—

pooling in the cracks ingrained in the night pavement.

A dove, dove stolen from the ash-black cage—

where it sat simmering for seventy years, dreaming—

of suns weeping for ruined worlds.

And we sat there, watching the bird, featherless

   Air scratching our throats until we coughed up our kidneys

      Sun crashing down to the ground, microphone feedback noise

         And I went home and wrote her an email, like I used to in the old days

            When we were younger, and said “saw something, made me think of you”

                “Because just like the bird, you are unfeeling, unsmiling, cold like the day that I'll die…                                                   

And I woke up two hours later, smelling like the pool of vodka that swallowed my keyboard.

Hair dripping sweat and saline, banging into things like a drunkard ferryman.

The one who lets his passengers, the woman with the ceramic face and the little boy with the dimples from his perpetual smile,

fall into the river while the seaweed cuts their ankles, and he cries,

and the woman would cry if she was not stone-silent, but the boy is smiling.

And as I watch the bugs move in to their winter home, pry open pinholes in the bare-naked corpse, stretched like the wetsuit I wore when my sister buried me into the icy February soil, so stretched you can no longer tell whether it was swan or pigeon or dove, or some other beastly thing, I think, but only think, that the bird is smiling too.