The machine that captured your song could not capture hers, in a known duet. You sang to her above the crickets, like an organ in Morse code, (or was it the cicadas?), lines lighting up the tape.
Imagine as the hurricane shouted and roiled beneath her she flew higher. Her flying was frantic, her dark wings furiously lifting her body, like a child lifting its arms to its mother, pleading, someone please catch me. She was so tired she could not sing.
She should have made for higher trees, a few cavities left. Perhaps she did rise, singing back to you, an echo of yellow pantaloons, irises faded to a blue concern. But you could not hear her above the water.
On the tape, where she should have been, a space, like a blip in the heart,
like the valley between mountains.
Long rows of both of you now line boxes. Eyes closed, talons tied. They opened your hearts, and they were full of flowers brimming with nectar, calling honey, honey, honey, we are but inches, inches away.
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