before you’re gone
something about birds
—after “Taken Flight” by Bennett Nieberg
Y assigns G and me birds as we tease the lake water
eyeing me where she thinks i can’t see, and i know she’s pleading
to be assigned one too, so i tell her something brightly colored
because it hasn’t hit me yet. and later that week i zoom in on a red cardinal
my fingers caging its flight as its open wings prepare to be taken by me
and i take it with the caption this one is you
and at the pool, Q says if they were a bird
they’d probably be a pelican, and after a dip under the water they lift
back up with a wet crash, shouting: a great gull! and i’m sure they know
there’s a difference between a pelican and a seagull but it doesn’t matter
not really, because they seem to have a thing about birds
and in that instant
the clouds let up
passing over their face—
and then the sun.
and something about it touches me, because having never read any of my poems,
that day at the pool they joke to our new friend that i only write poems about them (birds)
and for a while, our new friend believes it: she asks me, just birds?
and because Q is smiling at me from above her shoulder and because
they don’t know yet why my eyes soften and my hands slip like ships
along the metal pool ladder—
into the ocean.
i tell the two of them
that i assign a new bird for each poem
and i think to myself
in another world, maybe,
i do.
