a green whisper  
                    curled on the curb,  
                  still as a breath held too long.  
                 its wing, half-open,  
               pointed nowhere—  
              or maybe back,  
             to some place it could  
            never reach.  
           rome moved around it,  
          unbothered.  
         motors loudly passed,  
        the occasional siren.
       indifferent sonatas,  
      and the fountains laughed  
     cold, eternal laughter.  
     i stopped,  
    but the city didn’t.  
    its feathers were soft once.  
   i could see that—  
  even streaked with dust,  
  they shimmered  
like something meant to survive.  
parakeets don’t belong here,  
they say.  
escaped,  
invasive,  
out of place.  
but it had tried.  
god, it had tried.  
  i walked the rest of the way home,  
   carrying it with me,  
    the weight of its silence  
     pressed against my chest.  
      and when i closed the door  
       behind me,  
         the tears came fast—  
           for a bird i’d never known,  
             for a life that couldn’t stay,  
                for the quiet way  
                    i, too, fell out of the sky.

i eat,
and it eats with me.
i love,
and it sits between our mouths.
i sleep,
and it coils beside me,
breathing slower than death.

i thought time
would soften it—
turn it into mist
or memory.
but it is bone,
still lodged.
and splintering.

no one sees it anymore.
only i
feel the rot under my ribs,
the way my voice cracks
on ordinary words.

i live,
but not all the way.
i laugh,
but not from the center.

grief wears my face now.
and sometimes
i can’t remember
what i looked like
before it moved in.

this land was his cathedral—
he walked it like scripture,
hands buried in the soil
like he could forgive it
for everything.

but i cannot.

i return barefoot,
each step a needle
of memory.
this place opens its arms
and i flinch.

the room has a new bed now,
but the shape of that day
still lingers—
the soft collapse of his chest,
my ear pressed
to the drumbeat ending.
the air stilled.
the house exhaled.
and didn’t inhale again.

i sleep among ghosts
with no names,
only weather.
wind that hisses
through broken fences,
shadows caught in the corners
like secrets he never told me.

he loved this place
so fiercely
it must have hurt—
maybe that’s the only way
he knew how.

i keep trying
to separate the man
from the ground
he bled his days into.
but it’s all roots now.
it’s all entangled.
and i lie here,
still listening
for a heart that isn’t mine.

why does it make me feel ten again—
this hush between us?
as if the air itself forgets how to hold me,
as if time unspools backward
into a kitchen of linoleum and light,
where her voice once lived
like the ticking of a clock I could count on.

now,
she stares at the same window
as if it were a stranger.
words hang heavy in her throat
but never land.

and i—too old to need her hand,
too young to let it go—
am ten again,
aching at the altar of absence,
mourning the sound
of someone who’s still here.

No one we knew had climbed the old grain silo in our town.
Hands clinging to rusty metal, I rose
Up and up with my cousin
The cold air biting our skin
Watching the ground below us get farther and farther away
of grass and packed dirt.
We would slip up once or twice,
my cousin’s leg kicking out from its hold
My clammy hand losing grip.
We climbed up and up,
feeling hundreds of feet tall.
hearts beating fast against the ladder.
She got up first, hoisting herself onto the platform
I followed, carefully manoeuvring onto the
creaky metal. We had done it.

It was right in front of us- the sprawling grass fields
peppered with barns and houses and the occasional tractor
spreading like a flood into the forest.

My cousin nudged me, pointing at the house
whose property the silo sat on.
A tiny man opened the door, walking all the way
until he was right below us.

We laid, bellies flush against the metal
Barely daring to breathe.
I tried to remember who’s idea it was to climb this thing,
who wanted it first.
It was me.

Squeezing my eyes shut,
I heard his steps retreat.
We waited for what seemed like hours to get down
And silently promised to never go back.

Now, the silo sits there, fully abandoned,
Inhabited by a barn owl,
Cooing echoing through it-
What was once a dare has become a home.

Every other year, this reunion. All my life.
My uncle opens the door, trying to hug me-
I no longer oblige the way I did years ago,
stepping aside as he hugs my grandmother.

He awkwardly gestures us in.
The family sits on the sofas,
unease sifting underneath the carpet,
an undercurrent we pretend isn’t there.

Some things everyone agreed on, like
ignoring our ***** laundry,
pretending that it’s- we’re- okay
for grandma’s sake.

No one has forgotten.
My cousins stir their drinks,
stare at their nails,
barred from the teenage escape of phones tonight.
They’re younger than me-
not by much.
I always wonder if we’d be closer if I lived here
Probably not.

Even after all these years,
I still feel like I’m the only one who can sense her sadness.
She had history she doesn’t know I know about.
Her eyes sometimes catch on my uncle,
and each time it looks like she wants to say something heart wrenching
but instead, she averts her gaze and keeps her mouth shut.
I wonder what she would say if she tossed all caution into the wind
blowing away like ashes.

Meanwhile, my uncle bears the weight of conversation
somehow making it all about him.
No one actually wants to hear about his business,
his newest spiritual awakening
(Roman Catholic this time)
a once-every-seven-years occurrence.

I wish I could go back to when I didn’t know who he truly was.
Before he spit vileness at my childhood self,
before he attempted an apology over my grandfather’s dying body.

My grandfathers absence haunts this house
his books in corners
his chair my uncle so casually sits in.
He died in this room,
looking out on the fields sitting in front of our windows.
My uncle may have been his son,
but my grandfather would always tell me
there’s no one more special to me than my daughter’s daughter.

I sometimes wish I could forgive my uncle,
move on a happy family,
stay in their guest room and drink eggnog in front of a fire on cold Oregon nights.

But as I look at him divulging his oh-so-dramatic life stories,
I feel rage.
A hell inside me-
the kind he prays he will never experience.
I sit there and let it bubble, never too close to the surface,
and sit through the rest of the night
tucking away time into my pocket until they leave.

self awareness is not a gift.
i watch as i destroy myself,
and i don’t do a thing about it