closure

The songbird
perches on a chair back,
head tilted, one dark eye
reflecting my face
like a carnival mirror.

*Thank you*, I say,
though for what, exactly,
I cannot name. The songs
that filled my mornings?
The way she made loneliness
sound like a choice?

*Goodbye*, I add,
because that’s what you do
at the end of visits,
even when the visit
was never planned,
even when you arrived
through a door you didn’t know
you’d opened.

We stare at each other,
woman and bird,
predator and prey,
though I’m no longer certain
which is which.

My hand finds the doorknob,
turns it left, then right.
The door swings open
to reveal the same room
I’m already standing in.
I close it. Open it again.

She watches
with the patience
of someone that knows
about cages,
about the difference
between leaving
and being left.

-

the circuitry was faulty from the start. 
some cosmic electrician with shaky hands
splicing wires in the dark,
drunk on starlight and regret.

I woke up tasting copper pennies,
your voice humming in my fillings.
the landlord of my skull
had rented space to a stranger
without asking first.

(in the future/past/sideways,
they will say we were inevitable,
two trains on the same track
pretending to be surprised
by collision)

the power company sends no bills
for this particular service.
somewhere in a beige office
a woman in sensible shoes
marks “connection status: unknown”
on forms that smell like
bureaucratic despair.

I am a half-remembered grocery list
in someone else’s pocket.
you are the why behind
every unfinished sentence.

time shuffles its deck,
deals us the same hand
over and over:
two of cups, ace of confusion,
king of nobody-knows-what-the-hell.

the wires spark and hiss.
the power grid of the heart
operates without permits,
ignores all safety codes.

I didn’t sign up for this
electromagnetic haunting,
this neural cross-contamination.
but here we are,
lit up like a christmas tree
in july,
all wrong and exactly right,
burning down the house
we never knew we lived in.
