Thoughts

My father is smaller than a potato now maybe in the bluebird’s feather or the beak of the cactus wren but where is my mother? In my fingernail?

The crowd of bushtits on the thistle-seeds probably are uncles and aunts from various boneyards with their fetuses whispering together, ensoul, from bad days when they couldn’t be saved.

Someone planted but not me. I liked to harvest warm tomatoes and chives and when I ran away mostly no one cared or worried.

One morning socks bound my feet. I sat up, screamed. Everything inside skin crushed. Not funny but lifelike.

We two girls walked down Beacon Street arm in arm, wearing black sweaters. We lit up at the corner of Beacon and Charlesgate East. She took me for surgery, waited and came home with me and stayed.

Under the water, stocked salmon trout flicked tails and rounded and circled. So many rain-dropped windows and dirty screens. I just saw that junco fly straight up!

My brother was leaving, called to a different sky. Everything turning red and Bedlam behind him. One nest is as good as the next, he said, filled with wisdom.

Now people are kind, smart, and called Mimi. Remember catfish are carp in China, a nice gold in clear water. They eat, shit as we do, swim as we do, in their shit transformed.

What’s the worst thing you ever did? I don’t care to say.