Time Lapse

Time Lapse

A hummingbird is pulled like a bull toward the loudest reds, lands on the inmost branch to preen

where only I with window view can see the arching back of her green torso. I think of the sentence

the boy (man?) said to me while I lowered myself to a frameless, twin-sized mattress:

Your neck looks so breakable.

In a time lapse, nothing happens smoothly. Red horns quake as they splinter from limbs on the bottlebrush. It was

never the same after that, dancing, walking around the cemetery I liked to visit when the weather was good,

buying groceries after sundown. And what did I say to him, did I say, Thank you?

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