Diorama (young woman lying on the ground in a blue dress)

Pssst, girl. It’s OK for me to be this close to him because I’m a bird.

Not only am I a bird, but I’m a bird cut out

of the skin that holds his dreams together.

I can land anywhere on him and he’ll never notice.

I have a vision of him lying down in the road and of myself hunched over him

cataloguing his little, wiry darknesses:

eyelash, eyelash, eyelash.

A pile of seams. Midnight

in strands at my feet.

I’ve been followed and rummaged through.

What else you got,

I’ve been that question.

But he’s a stone well and I can fly down into him,

breathe in the green stone and dawn of him,

the pre-lung creation-scent.

And then I’m out. Hopping in the dust from foot to foot.

Looking at him with my button eye and pleased it went well.

Though he’s angry and bigger than me,

he’s completely without the kind of blanket or net it takes to catch me.