[I saw a little movie of a person stroking a small bird with two Q-tips, one held between]
I saw a little movie of a person stroking a small bird with two Q-tips, one held between
the forefinger and thumb of each hand. It tipped back its head to receive the minor
tenderness, which to the bird must have felt like being touched by a god. For a moment
I knew what it would be to feel at the mercy of love, small-scale, the kind shown but not
spoken of. I was afraid to touch you. I was afraid of the lesions you’d described to me
over the phone, their locations and the measurement, in centimeters, of each. Jesus-marks,
you called them. All so I would be prepared and unafraid or less afraid but still I was afraid
of dying like you were dying. When I first arrived I looked so long into your eyes you
shivered and ordered me to look away. You were imperious in your dying and yet courtly
about my fear, you understood, as if I were a child afraid of lightning storms, which I am,
having at age ten been struck. Out of the blue you said that once you were dead I’d never
be able to listen to Blue again, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, not just the song but the whole album.
It was a minor curse you lay across my shoulders like a fur dyed blue, and so I listen now
in defiance of you. In the listening the pronouns shift. We are listening. There is no death.
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