the bird in my throat has been pinching, all beak and flashing eyes and wet, wet regret. my limbs are shattering on the windowsill. my fingernails are yellow, my feet are cold. this shaking of my body will not cease. 

the bird rests on my back, composed. it snakes through my collarbone.

there has not yet been a language that could ask it to go. 

I am sailing on a floe of ice. I am unhinging my jaw. the black of my eyes is the black of the ice. I fall apart. Make me.

The feeling of panic like ice in a glass. Spinning slow, and fast, and not at all. A clinking in my shoulder blades. The bird laughs. A sick laugh, hacking. 

Fear is parting my lips with its tongue. Fear pours its words into my mouth, and they are thick and cloudy, specked with pieces of the hive. 

Hope, the sediment at the end of the beer. The aching wood of the barrel’s bottom. The bird pecks but does not draw blood– that is a task for others.

Pale French wrists are mirrored in scratches and I feel a fool. My hands shake. This mania will not cease. The night is full and long and overrun with corpses. The bodies of time, a moment’s decay. All the earth existing at once in a screeching hum. I am too full of memory; bring me a sponge.