understudy of sea

I hear no sea, I think water gets lost on me.
I’ve never swallowed enough of it,
nor taken in its plainness to my veins.
I keep my pond filled, dream of fish,
a red and blue one like the one I had
when I was nine. It had a friendly voice
that answered my prayers.

The closest I have been to an ocean
was only through love, vicarious—
but I have this little pond
with its fish memory, its potential,
no shells nor gulls, but a leaf,
falls into it every once and a while,
and a cat or two will use it to sip,
the wind will knock a plastic bag
into it, and it floats,
I hear no sea, just the small water
reacting as I pretend
a thank you bag is a fish.

The Cardinal

I am overcome by this life’s featherlessness,
the morning’s worm and my shock and awe
to sort it on the sidewalk with my little talons.
Still, I take less.

Tree to tree, I have a heartbeat at best,
so do we, so do we.
I am the wide-eyed
four-year-old with a trembling finger
who must tell the neighbor of the red bird
and quickly house the cat.

She names me,
but I will never know how sweetly
she will remember that name
as she grows and forgets to lay out any seed.
I’m so sure of my feathers and
their flight, I hope someday I fly too high
so I may forget little girls and their surprise,
so I may forget seeing them on the day of the funeral and
knowing that I must come back to the oleander
on that same day every year because I promised God I would.

I am hoping God forgets my promise as I fly into the sun.
I am a symbol of unforgotten things,
her notebook still knows my name but
I have been as nameless as I have been still.
My feet take another branch as home.
Another season, too.

The funerals come in May and I am back
until she is no longer there to see out the window.
Maybe she grew too tall.
Maybe she forgot to wonder.
Maybe she aged out of awe and saw that
I am only a cardinal
and that it means nothing more than that.

Maybe she knows that eventually
you lose your aunts to funerals and your hummingbirds, too,
or maybe you never had a hummingbird, only a cardinal and
you were too busy being small to name everything—
loving one thing at a time.

What a feathered thing, that love.

In Arrears

I am indebted to sleep.
It nibbles on my edges
like a small, scaly thing and
a sentence with too many adjectives.

A slew of beggars can nod off
for half the price,
carrying their pennies like peacefulness,
sorting it with their bruises and their socks.
We ask for a different relief.

I carry a tab—
forty winks on the pillow
for my head on the slab.
I give myself these bloody moments
as my soul seeks its sleep
because to pay for it in full—
I’ve had to kill all my counted sheep.

Originally published in the 2022 FACETS at the Butler County Community College.