I’ll see you in spring, they always say, and then don’t.
They have gone down the lane and out into the sweet air
in search of a thicker magic. They tell you they are one 
of the eighteen species of birds who have invented their own language
that you will never learn how to learn. You wait at the window 
in a smocked dress trying to paint lilies without crumpling.  
The gingerbread goes stale and the candied eyes crack.

Ten minutes ago in the city of childhood
they lay like orange kittens on your snowy breast.
Now here you are in the rainy light
cradling an oven-warmed stone.  
Everywhere there are statuaries of families singing,
and you trespass just to hear the old songs.  

I’ll see you on the sea, they say, but then they float past on a raft
made of sticks with a shipmate named Blackheart 
and tins enough for months. You wait on the tiny island 
with a nest of sparrows in your hair
waving every time you see the gulls.
The sun rises, the sun falls, the world darkens in the glassy inlets
and you knit pea-sized sweaters in the white-capped waves.
Now you endure the long hope of becoming a bird 
who can spot the pinpricks of their bodies
crashing against the rocks.

You’ll see, I will come back, they say, tripping over the graves
in shoes light as pumice in their hurry to get into the forest,
down the trail and into the woods and far away from you.  
You make candy thin and light as glass and hold it up 
to watch for their light amble. You lie awake
under the flickering stars believing that in the contest between 
the mountains and the wolves and the child,
the child will breakfast with the wolf and not within the wolf. 

I’m never coming back, they say, and when they return 
you are just about pewtered with grief.  
They are strange to you, full of mud
and locked like thieves, hiding between languages.  
You are the uninvited guest of your own sweet home, 
clattering about like a china tea set
as they burst from the cobbles like terrible golem.  
It is all you can do to rise into the air, 
invisible to clay and mortals
singing of their singular brightness.