All My Vendettas I’ve Given Your Name

How little shame I have, considering the many pities

of our feud.

                       For instance, the sympathetic stress

of our mynah bird, the one that learned to replicate

 my voice.

                       Morning after morning

we saw its cage sagged with the weight of the feathers it had

plucked and spat about itself. Then the morning

                       we found it dead beneath its perch, I knew

there was no one left to hear my pleas

for harmony. That you had given it my name—that black

                                  irony—was inescapable. So

all my vendettas I’ve given your name,

Alice. Which means noble. Which means truth.

how you’ll tremble in the morning

                                  when you see it at the end

of my boot trail, its hollow

body positioned just so

                       beneath the smeary prints

I’ve left on your window.