Home for Sale, In the Summer, After the Funeral

A 22-year-old says “I’ve never seen a bird die a natural death” as a sparrow tries to turn right-side up in the downpour. Its wings outstretched. The pavement empty of potential for flight. The Chicago train does not arrive for an hour.

The same 22-year-old holds a dead bird, losing the color green, in their hands years earlier, crying. Upset about the open windows. Now, the two birds in the cage cannot kiss. The wind whispers of natural death, expected taking. Now, I’m unsure just how much two is.

A man lays horizontally across the arms of a chair and says, “Thank you for helping me” twice. The second time is quieter. He closes his eyes. He, dressed in a full suit for work, not leaving, watches the crowd of people who came in the ambulance leave through his front door. He thinks he does not need to be hospitalized; he thinks he needs a vacation.

I walk around the neighborhood, not breathing. I am afraid of the sickness in your eyes and can tell no one how I feel because people are afraid of the sickness in my eyes just the same. I keep stopping on the sidewalk.

A woman stuffs her hair inside of a man’s hat to be able to cross the country freely and paints a love story, potentially by accident; a man looks over at a woman as she flees into greenery, and another woman holds her arm. It is hard to decipher just how many eyes bear heartbreak, just how many eyes bear freedom.

The house will be sold this summer because you are dead. My mother’s eyes console me after the news. She reassures me that there is time. There is no time. No time at all. No time to lay across the stains on your carpet. Sleep in your bed. Rip the wallpaper off of every wall. Keep the house forever. No time for you to breathe again.

On the lawn a headless bird rests, torn open, just its red flesh between two present wings. “Get up,” I choose to say. “Get up,” I say. The bird is no longer on the lawn.

I look into your casket after lingering near the front door, only thinking about how I cannot avoid looking into your face as it is dead. You have never looked the way you do now, this calm and serious. They put on your glasses, so you could look more like yourself. You do not. You make do with silence.

Do I want my glasses on in my casket after my eyes have stopped and someone I do not know closes them for me? Can someone I know be the one to close my eyes? Or, they could be closed before this closing. I may need to divide time to decide what to wear to my funeral if I have one. Purple. That much I know. You wore purple.

You are dying. I am thinking about dying as you are dying; as you have dark purple bruises on your arms. You scream as they reposition you in bed. Three relatives stand in the corner of the room, eyeing each other in the heart of the noise. A mother and two grown grandchildren. You wore purple.

I think about how your hair stopped growing for good as you are buried in dirt; I shave off all of the hair on my body after not shaving for over a year. I cannot tell if I am further or closer to you as I do this. Further or closer to not living. Further or closer to myself.

I listen to your voice reading your poems as you are away, and I think about all of the roads to breathing that could potentially never be walked upon. I find it hard to address this. As soon as a heart beats attuned to my rhythm of heart there could be a lull in all music before the orchestra begins as the crowd waits, not knowing the concert will never begin. So, I play your voice again. Curling up in the dark eye of a dream; thunder breaks. Is this music void of feeling? Can I craft an embrace out of silence if tomorrow sharpens into an unrequited state of existence, a togetherness that could never happen? Will anything ever move? Will time move so I can speak with you as I look into your eyes as we are both still alive?

I walk past a home where peonies grow and hands play the piano gently.

A man tells me I was meant to play the piano. We eat stracciatella together, pouring melted chocolate over the cold. He tells me he learned Spanish just to read the love letters other men were sending his wife when she returned from Spain. He and I both like when Frank sings All Or Nothing At All. He did not come to your funeral but you sat in the car with him listening to Frank; he told me. When your face was home to facial expressions you had unspoken thoughts about this man. Thoughts I can’t know; I never asked for the thoughts.

I do not use my hands. Not to write him a letter about his changing my life. Not to play your piano after you are dead.

Black ants hurry to flood out of the center of a peony in the second backyard. The danger they sense is my movement. But they still flee when I stop moving. I cannot see anything but movement. I do not have my glasses on.