Dawn a friend through green curtains,
this rain a frenzy of gnats

and like Joan Crawford
in her black cowboy shirt

stairstepping left foot first. i must
be that kind of courageous

pour bottled into kettle, think
maybe this will motivate

some resolute. A black-capped chickadee
stalks the sideporch. Folds into

a break in the screen. i have not been this close
to anyone in days. The chickadee shelters underneath secondhand

lamp and we watch thinwinged suffocation
between screen and door.

Their bodies pile.
A defeat

a mountain i spray.
Amend an already over.

My joints swell in the rain.
The chickadee burrows her head into these boots

from a past lover though only in the sense i truly loved
another for the first time scrubbing dishes

midnight, hungover in loungewear
when they brought me a video

of two cats basking in the sun and went
that’s us, you know.