my words are the mosquitoes singing in the forest my words are the leaves shoving themselves up from the branches.

The sky is wheeling with other suns other histories already over.

this animal had tasted joy and terror and time,

I was the panting ribs of the graveyard owl from Kalihi that knew only green hunger sleep shit fly fly breathe hunger breed breed fly hunt breathe fly and red fight fight take fly fear, and also I was the old woman I’d treated on an earlier shift in Portland, who had collapsed on her walk to the park and her blue flashes of forty years waking at

your father made me laugh until my cheeks prickled with heat and the last shadows of the trees were pointing long toward the horizon.