she doesn’t remember anything
that matters
but birds folded from the ingot sky
to earth
enveloped
held
dark shimmer
smothered
to decompose
the giddy shriek
of collective
winged refusal
wafted on
dormancy
beneath
surrender

and
the confusion
dirt
for bruise
her astonishment
at the erasure
of wreckage

as the rain fell
under starlings