the january sun beats down
at seventy-five
and i awake to hear news of the grackles
found dead en masse,
sixty of them scattered downtown
overnight-

and you tell me that you don’t fall in love
with these faces at cafes anymore,
with the smiles that pass across the lips
drawn on the bottom half of a face,
with a name you wished you knew-
that a cherished book glimpsed on a stranger’s table
no longer incites those fantasies
you’d chosen to live in-

well,
what else did you think growing up would feel like?

did you think it would feel
like discovering those grackles
on a warm morning
in a city that you had once
called home?

that an investigation would be launched
over the corpse of your youth
and the culprit would have to be found,
punished,
brought to justice
before you could properly mourn?

so you no longer throw your love ahead of you casually,
like rice tossed at a wedding,
you no longer wait for the ones who fly by you
to feed upon it idly,
you no longer wake up on warm mornings
to find the streets littered
with dead grackles.