(to tie bows in the arrows which pierce our hearts.)
the cat finds its way onto the counter
and is licking the sharp edge of an empty soup tin.
it makes me sick in my stomach,
how i used to write love letters about your boots
about soil and shoe laces
about the cuff of your pants as if it were the caring hands of a mother.
i am in the car now, the stereo is old but it still works, with a bit of a crackle
i push an old cassette tape in and dial the volume knob back and forth,
the terrified parrot, made of wood sitting on my dashboard is not
a dashcam, and no one has mistaken it for one.
a low sigh,
and i can’t remember how to write stories,
and i don’t have ideas the way i used to.
i put the car into reverse and move down the driveway.
as i back out onto the road i close my eyes
and you wait, tension in your hands
for some speeding car to smash into me
or a kid on their bicycle to fall under my bumper.
i put the car into first and set off up the street.
some neighbours are out on their lawn
one of them looks up at me and waves
their hand flops around on the end of their wrist
like a broken spatula with grotesque fingers and
i think of the time you made me breakfast
it was october and at your house in little italy,
your sister had been jailed for something kind of like fraud
while working as a gardener
she had been entering clients homes,
dressing in the homeowners clothing
and video taping herself in their kitchens
conducting interviews and baking bread
as if she, as them, was on a television program with Martha Stewart.
we were sitting at the table on the small balcony
you had made poached eggs and toast
and you told me that you thought you might, do you remember,
that you might like to own an exotic animal of some kind,
i think you said a sloth or an ocelot or maybe a toucan
or some kind of poisonous tree frog.
in that moment you reminded me of my father
and how he used to trap pigeons,
he would bring a cardboard box to the park
and spread out a bunch of falafel that he had infused with his sleeping pills
and the pigeons would come and eat the drugged falafel
and eventually some of them would get really slow
and he would just pick them up, the ones which couldn’t fly away
and put them in the box and take them home
he had this cage in his apartment,
and he lived on the ground floor of his building,
they would wake up
and be in this cage in the window and he had a sign
that he put up just before thanksgiving and at christmas,
“Cheap Turkeys! Butchered To Order!”
we ate breakfast there that day and after we had eaten
you told me that you’d had your legs lengthened when you were 25
and that you had saved about 70 thousand dollars
by having the surgery done in Russia
and that was when you had first seen a Matisse in person, there in Russia
at the Puskin Museum
and I loved you for it and for the eggs as well.