At first, I thought the white wash of clouds was the birds. Then I saw them, fifteen or eighteen, twenty-two was the most I counted, many with three or four legs, in Morris Grave’s gouache of them, slivers and tubes picking at surf-scatter, one in front I swear had five. They’ve stayed with me longer than Audubon’s eagle or Picasso’s dove; they were unexpected. Who knows where I read that a particle of Julius Caesar’s final exhale is in 99% of the inhales I take now. I remember a Cosmo survey that reported that 18% of women masturbate once a week, and 11% once a day--but how current is this? I wanted to ask a coffeehouse crush, white t-shirt, black bra, out for, well, coffee, I figured it was a good time (re: Cosmo), her head would have rested right in the curve of my collar bone, I asked her about the book she had with her, set up the next conversation, the ask-out one, but it never happened. She took a week off, and by the time she returned, we’d broken up in my imagination, because I ran out of things to say to her.
