XIII “I started drawing feathers
of different colors at an age
when I left childhood and believed
that man could fly. So behind each feather
is a destination where I’ll fly.
My mom always asks how
I’ll get rid of these feathers.
Every time, I say the best way to forget a drawn feather
is to sit in a running train,
cookies between your teeth,
gazing out the window
at a blue mountain
till you forget the cookies
but the buttery sweetness lingers
in the saliva
so that you think you’re the blue mountain
gleefully peeking at the bottoms of passing clouds.
But I’ve stopped drawing feathers
and quit looking at trains
because now I really am a feather
of the big bird raised inside the golden bell.
I really am flying to the clouds now.”
XIV “Because I actually am a kid and nobody believes me, my aquatic life underwater without my parents completed my growth. The first time I mistook the sea’s surface for blue sky, I screamed, and didn’t know it felt so good to lose the whole world. Other water-breathing creatures nodded at me and this was how I realized my tentacles were gone and I was tough. They said our two legs were already gone before that. We were outcasts. But now I think swimming is even easier for my life. Every night when I eye the rippling blue-and-white clouds streaking across the new firmament, I feel like I’m sleeping in my mother’s arms.”
