A bird came to sit on my balcony.

One moment it was there and the next not.

 

I don’t remember when the ground swallowed me up,

but there was an after. I gagged on the smell of peat

and down feathers. Wild and ragged with loss

I was possessed to go to my window.

 

I never felt the crash, but in the falling I imagined

my muscles like clay, heavy on my bones,

malleable to the hands of the inevitable earth.

There’s relief in returning to dust.   

 

I didn’t fall to my death. I stepped off the roof

of my house and stood suspended, like a god

or a ghost. I knew I would have to fall eventually,

but for a moment I was nearly favrile.