Footsteps disperse the little birds. Together they abandon their camouflage of dry grass, a flock of tongues springing from a barren mouth, finding safety in the sky and the ungrounded buzz of electrical lines. I follow, fleeing the hover of other bodies whose accents trouble my continuity with your song.

A lone amaranth seed bursts thick and bruised red, bird-sown like you. It challenges my collar bone while an insect reduces it to scaffolding. Bowing in the day, erect beneath the stars, we live in alternation, a cooperation of vision inside the blink.

𓆱

Ear to the night, I hear a hoax of owls that vanish with a turn of the head, existing only in the space of inattention.

Dreaming, I ask for the man who dyed my skin with the geography of the bird. I hold out the hoopoe and he seeds my arm with a river of feathers, neck to fingertips. Later, the taste of dried apples and white chocolate served at the edge of the forest.

𓆱

I wake often with the feeling of your company slipping beneath the surface of memory. I let it wash from my hands, knowing I can’t clutch a dream with a dream. Knowing the extent of our lives isn’t measured in recollection and a dream asunder inscribes us nonetheless.

Again I wake, wondering if your ubiquity tires you.

In small moments hidden in the folds of morning, I find myself startled by the miracle of your voice in the absence of feathers, aware of the fact that there are no birds between us yet they haunt everything you touch.