Raised to live in the expectation of angels,
speaking trees, sinkholes, and suffering,

I plummet on a tenuous threshold
only one dog’s bark from holy instruction

or a paramedic’s bag landing in the hallway.
And yet compelled irreparably to love,

I put my breath onto the mirror,
and toast the ground as much as the snow:

this is life at the top, I know. I know.
To have survived this far. To have gotten

away with myself and wept into a clearing.
There was a chance that a bird took

instead of a boy. That was what happened
in my case. And in my case, I was the bird.