Dear Birds,

 

I weigh 5,000lbs and I’m
a sack of blood. My bones
beneath the fat must be
broken, but only barely speak
of something wrong. This is
just waking up. This is just
morning.

 

 

*

 

 

Dear Birds,

 

I lay down in my
grandmother’s chair. “Were
you here when it was like a
hospital?” “No,” I say. “You
missed a lot,” she says. Yes, I
missed a lot.

 

 

*

 

 

Dear Birds,

 

She’s a fat zombie and she’s
traveling with a blue purse.
It’s your fault she has to walk
again. She never got what she
wanted in life, and now she’s
on a trolley with you and so
am I. Everything looks pale
and you’re nodding in this
godawful way...

 

 

*

 

 

Dear Birds,

 

I plant the banana tree as
a baby tree, and it doesn’t
matter. It’s the only tree I’ve
ever planted and there won’t
be others. What we’re given
and what we’re given and
what we do with it and how
stupid, how immensely stupid.

 

 

*

 

 

Dear Birds,

 

I love you, but you’re a ton
of spiders and it’s me or the
spiders. You or me. Me or the
gun. The gun or the gun. The

night or the gun. The spiders
pointing at the gun. The birds
eat the gun. The spiders spiders
spiders gun gun gun.

 

 

*

 

 

Dear Birds,

 

From 400 miles away I text
you to tell you I know you
stole my lighter. Basically I care
about space because we had a
conversation about it once. I
lay down on the unpaved road
where it crosses the river. The
cattle are lowing. Their soft,
dumb eyes away in the dark.
Their bodies like fat stacks of
cloth.

 

 

*

 

 

Dear Birds,

 

I believed in your dick
paintings. Look at me coming
to you like a Billy goat in the
rain. I felt my brain making
a shape. I felt people still not
liking me in a new way. I
remember specifically saying,
“Maybe tomorrow we can
start again.”

 

 

*

 

 

Dear Birds,

 

We don’t know how to be nice
or whatever—how to love.
Unless love is a kind of seesaw
where one person is hating the
other a lot of the time. Do I
ever get stuck in you? I tend to
doubt it.