You wait in the aching time of your room. There is a great, oaken bed, perhaps; perhaps an Ikea particle-board frame; perhaps only the ground is that second layer of armor around you after the mattress. You are face down in unforgiveness. It might take years to move, you think. The room is coffee-colored with spots, cold and warm and winnowed of constancy, beyond you, in those sheets, waiting for daybreak: to sleep, and linger.

You pray your flesh tender and you find it is only so under the knife. You hope yourself smooth and silken, a gossamer harp. A man bursts in broken fifths. You dream the air into your bones, porous and birdlike, and you feel them crack in a great wind. There is no flight, you say, no way out. You can’t stop saying it.

A sun rises. A great flock of geese pass over your mother’s home. A robin screeches at spring. Wingbeats heavy, a swan mourns its egg. Chickadees peruse the debris of winter. A crow calls for you outside your window. The loon sings its past into air. In the summer, a hummingbird zips by your ear, and you smile at her tenacity.