PARK

The birds came to eat the bread from my hands in the park. Two ravens.

When they began to throw their bodies into the work I felt a sudden need for weight.

I watched them dig into my skin and pull up dark deep strings from my wrists.

Soon they hovered over the library with the strings in their beaks.

A boy asked if he could have a turn at my kites.

Right as I was about to hand over the strings to the boy, the birds gained some form of place and plot.

They carried me through the sky and the little boy became smaller. I called to him and told him not to worry. He cried with his hands in his mouth.

I watched the park become smaller.

We landed in an old Indian burial ground. The birds put together a small bed of twigs for me under a peach tree. I felt asleep thinking of the boy in the park and the way he cried as I was lifted to the sky.

He was very beautiful and I wanted to see him again one day.

I asked the birds if I would see the boy again and the birds did not answer. The birds were busy working the strings into the roots of the peach tree.

I asked them again if I would see the boy again. But I couldn't get the words to come. Instead I vomited a peach on the ground.

The birds took the peach and buried it. I began to cry and kept asking if I would see the boy. An Indian ghost burst from the ground where the peach was buried. He chanted a song for me and put his hand on my wrists.

I felt a cooling power pass through the strings and into my face.

When I opened my eyes the Indian was slurping the strings into his mouth like spaghetti. I began to feel weaker and weaker until I slumped to my knees and asked the Indian for mercy.

The Indian granted me mercy and took me into his teepee.

When I woke up in the morning half my body was covered by an intricately woven quilt. Beside me stood a wooden loom working to finish the weave with the strings from my wrists into the quilt covering me.

The cone lapels of the teepee opened and the boy from the park came in holding a brown tablet carrying bread and water.

He left the tablet by the loom and then pulled something from his shirt and left it in my shoes by the entrance.

Two dead birds.