more little birds in forty-eight and a half

wake in the dark…lie in bed, listen to rain on roof, staccato drone soothing, hushing now, moving slowly across the yard, softer on grass, but still cold, wet, bleeding, reaching, down, down through the dirt and bones of the ages.

he looks long out the window when she is gone to work, her morning shawl still warm on the chairback under his hand, droplets pregnant and glistening on plum trees. this place is his, but he’s thankful it’s only until she returns. he would slide deeper if she wasn’t there to come home to him, sinking, fading like the pale sun. this truth, once anathema, he accepts without fight, because people change.

no, he thinks…people are changed. his eyes drift into the middle distance, windowstreak, settle, until tiny birds, baker’s dozen, bring him back, hop branch to branch, peck in grass, heads cocked this way, that, birdsong and flit filling the interstices where raindrops once existed.

it isn’t possible to watch them without a lightness growing in his chest, but he won’t look away.

not this time.

Last updated October 21, 2016