Bone Pile

At the lake house

the hummingbirds kept arriving wrong,

all blur against the feeder

your dad wired to the porch decades ago

and still fills every spring.

*

Your schedule changed that morning.

Double shift. No birthday dinner.

No dancing.

The little downtown place with cloth napkins

closed before we ever got there.

*

You said it casually.

Like weather.

I remember the ending first.

You asleep sideways across the bed

in jeans,

one boot still on,

arm hanging off the mattress

like gravity finished the argument for you.

*

But before that,

or after,

Tommy Wiseau came up somehow.

You laughing hard enough to cough.

Somebody knocking over the dominoes.

Five five. Blank four.

The clatter still inside my teeth.

*

You said every conversation with me

turns into competitive dance.

Sharp counts.

Everybody smiling through injuries.

I kept staring at your hands

instead of your face.

*

After that,

sequence went bad.

Adrenaline flooded the room so fast

my hearing narrowed.

Ice cracking in a glass.

Rain through the screen door.

Your voice from very far away

saying test, test, test

like a microphone check.

*

Then the silence.

My jaw locked shut so hard

I could feel my pulse inside my molars.

Outside,

the hummingbirds kept throwing themselves

toward sugar water,

tiny drunks at a locked door

still convinced

something inside would open.