I had a memory of flight, how I’d stood
in my bedroom on the eleventh floor, balancing
on a multicolored ball, willfully heaving myself
to a place of hovering in the air. I liked the idea
that wanting anything badly enough could make it happen.
I never told my parents this, the way I told them
I could count to a hundred, tie my shoes —
childhood’s expected, onerous tasks.

I had no fear of heights, volunteered to be the first to fall
from the topmost place on the tallest ladder I’d ever seen
into the arms of all those serious looking,
nervous boys — a theatre exercise
in trust, something I’d lose within a single year.
But inside that backwards falling motion,
it felt as if bodies were meant for this. And gravity
was something I could trust, could easily
have fallen into bed with, mistaken it for flight.

I never wanted to be a bird, didn’t want the hard work —
feeding others, building nests, lit glass
in the skyscraper night. I knew what could happen
if you tried to cross the line of the species
you were meant to keep inside. How badly it hurt
the mermaid, for example, walking across
what would never feel like sand, only shards of glass
beneath her new and tender feet. I’d like to have warned her, asked,
Would he do that for you? Your human prince?

But I still sometimes believe the birds in the trees
outside the window on President Street
are speaking to me — even in a language they know
I can’t speak or sing. Not that they are singing
only for me — I’m not that far gone —
but that their inscrutable music —
throat-warble, feather-whisper, rustle and click —
might hold a message I’ve yet to uncode
from someone I once knew — just possibly, in this instance,
taking the form, if not of a bird, then of sound itself —
those riotous notes, so urgent and out of reach.

And so, I listen closely, taking in their song, not so much
because I’m thirsty that way, but because —
if there’s even a chance — wouldn’t it be foolish, a grave mistake
not to listen, not to believe. Leaves, branches, the wind —
so much green and air — as good a place
as any I’ve ever seen to fly.