when blackbirds call to roost

If the thumb reaches

into a blackberry pie

only to find a departed

blackbird

And its cohort

calls you to roost

with them,

please call me instead.

I have been there—

for you—

since the black and white

New-York-cookie-style

opposites book.

Since the crumbly banana

teething biscuits.

Since our sparrow-bodied sparring

turned to all-out fisticuffs

and the silent tension

bloated between us

like a toad-bellied balloon.

Day one you

screamed and kicked, red faced.

Clenching—

onto the doctor’s thumbs—

into this world.

Light as a baby bird,

so that’s what you were christened

unofficially by us and

when you chopped

your feathers

into a halo of

buzzcut brunette,

more than just a foot

of curly-fry ringlets

were shed.

So if you go to the football game

and the dip-doused beer can

next to you, ever utters the f word—

“Faggot.”

Show them

my hands.

Reach inside the pocket

of your denim jacket

And say, “look.”

These were hands

whose blue-painted palms

you read for creases

like the crooked spine

of a river.

Whose fingernails you stroked

with the levity of lemon meringue.

Whose fingers you squeezed

when I felt like I was choking

and choking

and choking

and breathed vitality back into,

fingertip to fingertip.

When they perch upon

clinical, cynical incantations

they call biblical,

take back your throat, unclip your wings.

You are no stranger

to the gum-cutting wire of religion’s

cranked-tight braces shoved

inside of you, casting a mold

to make us gag.

Catholicism, to you,

is a twinkling, far-gone

semblance of tears

in the deadened, black box around you,

your bedroom.

When the compass needle

guiding you, Birdie,

begins to spin

and spin

and point to black-top driveway tar

scorched with summer’s

incandescence

and our chalk pastel doodles

are reduced to a rain-smeared

Holy Ghost of a smile

Let me wrap you in my arms

like how only a sister

can. Let me climb

through the phone,

let me in.

Let me in so deep

there is no way out, but through.

Let me become the beacon

through which you repeat,

I hated March

I hated March

I hated March

With the elasticity

of a tan rubber band.

your voice will warp

into a warble

and your throat will be cubism.

And together, we will hopscotch

into a galaxy

of glitter-spangled divinity.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.