[I saw a little movie of a person stroking a small bird with two Q-tips, one held between] by Diane Seuss

[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.