The angels fall together, Nico in Quarantine & 3 goods about you by Josie/Jocelyn Suzanne
The angels fall together
For Eleanor and Ivy
We worked together
on the creation- its daily
updates, its regular
debugging-
We fell together almost
without intent
we steadied our hands
designing the rain
we helped each other come to terms
with the seasons, how one leaf
becomes itself, over
and over. We didn’t recognise until
it happened. We wake up over a border:
our wings folding over
we are becoming
transfixed through our hands,
feathers light with eyes. Each
eye is a tongue, a fishhook, a cross
over identifying
options on official paper. We are fixing
our eyes, to pull a confession
out of rib cage, a testament that yes we are still
living well, the topsoil is wet
under our feet, alive with burrowing insects, the bones
of archaeopteryx buried 66 million years deep
—somewhere in Hell— are celebrating this late arrival
to our ceremonies. The stars still
roughly similar to the outlines we are leaving
as we fall into one another.
Nico in Quarantine
" …an exercise different emotions with him, you know?
Don't feel you need to boop him continuously
on the nose. He's a growing boy,
he can identify new patterns."
Every time they enter the room, in their
dad's arms, they blow a raspberry. You
go "waaaaa", like an ambulance, they retort
"wah." You go She loves you
Yeah Yeah Yeah! they mouth
yeah yeah. They like your cat-ears; if
you had a full-tail, they would glue to you like
an oyster, pearl as baby tissue.
You clean the dishes thrown up by quarantine
and stop when they repeat Stop. You
run your hand over the Dungeons and Dragons
Player Handbook, say boooo-
oooook! running your fingers over the magic list and
glossary of terms, for them. Each spell
is a gender, you say. Fireball. True
Resurrection. Polymorph. Power Word
Kill. You address them and
they still don't know their name, or are
keeping it close. You smile and
they mirror you, their two pristine molars, still
developing alveolar ridge. You are so new
you say: you're like a UFO landing in Brunswick and
declaring peace. They are mimicking
the who-who of owls.
3 goods about you
you try to keep clean
timelines of yourself: the you
watching the mirror
like a shelter animal, the you
gasping in pleasure
at the brand of hot water and
the you that takes
shape out of laundry detergent,
vacuuming and ammonia
cleaning the good knives in slight
confidence. You are
kind to the air that burrows
through the house, fills
the gaps the ants formicate
through, the grooves
for the balcony door, full
of crumbs, lint, dead
skin, the crevices. You
like the ringing in your ears
it keeps you
honest, on your toes, a bare
minimum of very good.
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