by Kirsten Rian.
Suppose, then, all the birds in the world line up and perch along the equator–for luck, for love. It is spring and migrating patterns confluence back and forth–give me what I need in the guise of what I want, call it north, south, be it marriage, divorce. Yesterday while walking the dog my boy tells me he still cries alone in his room a lot. Suppose, then, we wake from hibernation–for light, for longer days. It is spring and my daughter mows the lawn with our hand pusher. Later, she yells at me, I tell her to clean up her mouth, she emerges from her room 30 minutes later with silence is everything scrawled up and down and around her right arm, she walks around the house with her arm held up like a banner, like a drawn sword, like an estuary jutting off from the river toward some ocean I can hear but can’t see. But it’s there, covering seventy-one percent of my earth, it’s there pounding my shore, the one she’s headed for while I wait here for the coroner’s report that will arrive in week eight and now in week six I’m thinking no one dies of nothing, no one walks into a hospital and dies of nothing, do they? Suppose, then, all the birds of the world line on the wire strung in front of our house like a forecast, like a sign, like a treaty delivered on wings through air in place of your apology for leaving us here.