MY FIRST WORD WAS A CROW


it is neither my birthday nor yours.
the calendar marks something of the kind of importance
without any specification.
the mother keeps holding the child
and so much of life is left for us to initiate,
less to our imagination.
so much of you is left to our best guess.
yet I refrain, I would like to hear your story from you.
I already tell myself how too much of everything I do not know
as if to put out the flames of a wildfire.
I did not start this.
but I am carrying buckets of water since the beginning
of summer. I love you and I am tired.
who will explain to me about the doorknob? I can let go
but the right thing this time.
indeed this one is a spectacle.
so the average person lives with so little out of fear of being opinionated
or forgiving.
we miss all the birthdays and the weddings.
the day we stop receiving invites is the day on the calendar we start asking,
can I be this person?
then yes glides out of the mouth as if to say it for the first time ever.
a newborn eager to talk only to be able to participate in the rest of the world
the confused rest of us
and no one stops her.
no one warns her about what will come next after the first word.
because no one really knows a life with no sentence to live by.
no one really knows a life without yesterday or tomorrow.
there are doctors, speech therapists, sign language professors walking among us. today.
do you know what you want?
crows understand me.
this isn’t a song on a loop.
this is the mundane spectacle called truth
and I am spending a calendar lifetime understanding how I’ve learned about it
to bounce it back to you.