What cords could hold the hummingbird?
They’ve tied it down with strings
to sip the nectars of her flesh
and, glowing, gild her ivory bones,
the lining of her chest.

​

I see the strings that hold it here
the tender blue and green
that threads her skin; I hear its wings –
that steady thrumming, hidden beat
beneath the breath,
the whispered whir
of white machines that stir
and dream of steady breath.

​

And if I told you how I met her,
tell me, could you know?
Perhaps I met her yesterday,
I met her in these corridors
that hold the scent of dying.
Perhaps I loved and married her
one evening when the leaves had learned
to turn to praise the sun –
that night, I would have praised her
with my heart filled, nearly bursting.
Still perhaps we were as one,
as once she drew her sustenance
from my own body, growing stronger
in its confines, tearing from me
on that night when oceans turned
in gentler rhythm. Still perhaps
she was my sister, and her hands
were growing graceful as she
helped me braid my hair.

​

I could say we argued
when I called her late last night and called on
some far older anger always
hovering between us like
a hummingbird.

​

And tell me, could you know?
The multitude I am could fill
this hospital twice over – when
I speak my voices overlap
and break. How could you know,
and how could I, who must have known her
ever hold another being as myself –
we all are atoms, never touching,
wandering towards connection,
never knowing, always reaching,
always loving self as other,
other self.

​

Right here, we watch her linger
on the edge of the unknowable,
herself the great unknowable,
my words the song unsung.
The multitude I am
could not imagine all the facets
of her soul, her body breathing,
quick wings beating,
growing desperate, falling soft.

​

I know you knew her when
you felt the blood flush through her veins
and when you placed the needle in her flesh
and watched bright blood well out.
I know you knew her when we spoke
this morning, when you read
the hollowed touchstones of her life –
she pledged in sickness and in health,
that deal she made, she made with me
or else some aspect of myself.
What more could you have known?

​

She held my hand in Eden.
Still she comforts me as we journey East
and towards the rising sun.

​

What multitudes we will have been
in moments, what we are right now
some greater, silent one.
The one that never knew itself,
and could not ever know itself
nor others, but could feel them
in the room with white machines.

​

The hummingbird lights down to rest
and softly folds its wings.