Bird Love

Sweet love,

Young love,

Bird love reaching with chirp and chatter

To pluck and preen each other until they only have one feather left,

bald,

To make nest of snapped twigs–

Like tiny bones that make infant ribcages–that

Cup and cradle

Fragile dreams trapped within blue robin

Shell that will confine them until the last second,

So easy to break from the outside

but not from within

Where fluid-drowned hopes

Died

or lived.

.

Bird love,

Silent love,

Lurking love gripping me from the moment my eyes met yours

Like Theseus did the Minotaur’s,

Fear pressing in from every pore,

frightened,

But willing to try anyways

Like the way the sun did for the moon,

eternal,

Chariot chasing fisherman with hummingbird heart aflutter,

Their love was what made

the earth

go

round.

.

Lurking love,

Toxic love,

Drowned love you had me like a beached whale

Who was forced to look at the setting sun

Over crescent waves I once cherished

Before tired, sunburned eyes

grew heavy then no more

while seagulls wailed like banshees,

ignored.

And kids ran by the carcass

To marvel at it

Rotting blueberries crushed in their palms like sulfur,

Rivulets of stains kissing their skin blue, yellow, and purple

Forevermore as they suddenly learned what death was

.

–what

happened

to that little girl

i once was?