To hold the bird and not to crush her, that is the secret. Sand turned too quickly to cement and who cares if the builders lose their arms? The musk of smoldered rats on sticks that trailed their tails through tunnels underground. Trickster of light, I walk your cobbled alleys all night long and drink your salt.

What else to call the way the bare branches
I’d bought at the neighborhood bodega
came back to life that winter.
I’d carried them home—dry, wrapped
in paper—stuck them in the square vase,
and, as an afterthought, filled it with water.