late spring ~ 2026

anything that looks like an opening

Unforgivable, how good the windows are
at pitching their sale to the birds:
More air here. Come in.
We cut apart our shirts and made ropes
to hang over the glass: warn the birds.
Then we cut apart more of our clothes
to make face masks so we could have even more
distance from each other. Now
everything I wear has a future in protecting
the world from the world. Did you know
you can paint a collar gold
if you want your head to become a flower?
You can redden your cuffs if you want to show
where your hands will be when they have nothing
to hold. Inside, some of us are clouds
and some of us are windows who need a bird
to fly through. That’s how lonely we are.

by Jennifer Oakes.