Soon enough, the pigeons will gather on the windowsills
of the high-rises. Their beaks will shatter the glass windows apart.

A boisterous parting, a riot alternating
between the scarlet and the blanched,
the ravishing alluring chant, forever hinging

on the radiant, has just been unwritten.

A parting is an abandonment, after all. And,
it is only in abandonment that we burst open

the alabaster replica.

Yet, commemorate.

The legend that would narrate in painstaking
detail, what happened to the girl
who said no to the family car, is yet to exist.

An elbowing of my way into the secluded
history of brotherhood, is, first and foremost,

a never-discussed pedagogy.

I trip at the threshold, bump my nail
against the door. You laugh—almost
in the same way children laugh

at the sound of a falling human being.

Because I have shut the door to dainty elegance,
I know compassion, too, would never be mine. [End Page 90]

Yet, because the refusal of tragedy yields unpredictable results,
I will come by your house, drag you out into the street by your hand.

Beware. I will have nothing
for you other than broken bones,

mangled maps

and memories of cataclysmic failures. [End Page 91]