Note on Youth
That evening I had been counting
the flames in the sandpit,
trying to assess the hours we yet had
to toast our skewered foods. Each red tongue
had not been different from the last
—still they were departing. There is no birch
to whom that ash may return. Perhaps yet a tree.
This is the torture of the transitioning body: It is
impossible to win, as it cannot fulfill all functions.
Our politic is doomed.
But the smell of piss and salt gave to wood smoke
and we heard a tern laughing somewhere in the waves.
Upon fingers it had chosen feathers. For years they are kept
a tern's wings, paired in wedges beside the heart,
common to a project of bashless flight.
page revision: 10, last edited: 23 Sep 2024 10:53