The garden, a micro-wasteland: cracked ceramic and glass; peat moss gone amok with ice, tangle, and quandary. Mourning doves thread dirges into blackbird noise; the blue jay cry, a semicolon.
Let’s pretend to be yellow, he said—the yellow of daffodils; we can somersault through crocus, primrose—without any definitions for sorrow.
I bought tickets for the monorail, she answered—so we can live inside a different city where pristine snow glitters under quaint streetlights, where passer-bys dream in poems without any answers.
I’m disappearing, he said—studying the palm and thin fingers of his left hand. When the ice shifts the sun, I can’t form human sentences, remember the passcode to myself.
Blackbirds are stuck in my throat, she answered—mourning doves nest in my unwashed hair. The blue jay is a semicolon between cities where I could have loved my breath on the mirror, your hand on proliferating, turquoise doors.