and I didn’t mean to, this was not my intent. I meant to say how I loved the birds, how watching them lift off the branches, hearing their song helps me get through the gray morning. When I wrote about how they crash into the small dark places that only birds can fit through, layers of night sky, pipes through drains, how I’ve seen them splayed across gutters, piles of feathers stuck together by dried blood, how once my car ran over a sparrow, though I swerved, the road was narrow, the bird not quick enough, dragged it under my tire as I drove to forget, bird disappearing part by part, beak, slender feet, fretful, hot, I did not mean to write about death, but rather how when something dies we remember who we love, and we die a little too, we who are still breathing, we who still have the energy to survive. - Kim Dover

All I heard was a window. A long weed beat unevenly against it.