To be bled into by this or that borderless

    event while the birds were away, the very

ones that were never not there. They had

                                                                             flown

    the fall of Troy, what Huff had been call-

ing the fall of Troy, loath not to euphemize the

  knife he’d gone under, the cyst on his ilium,

                                                                                   pel-

      vic dismay. Playing loose with fate, mak-

  ing fun of it, making light, was prophecy, what

    Huff meant, what Huff the Prophet meant…

                                                                                     A

  light rain was coming down in Low Forest, a

    drape or a veil of sorts, a curtain of beads it

looked like. One lay back or one looked out, an

                                                                                        eye

    on each drop if one could, Nub at the torpe-

      do prez’s mercy, a harder rain eventually

to fall. Why were we there, I was asking Huff, of

  all possible places why were we there, another

                                                                                         feel-

      good cop show on the tol’you in front of us.

  I thought of my niece and my nephew, long since

    gone, never not no way I was over it, never it

                                                                                         was

  only the way things go… We were watching the

    tol’you reminiscing the times we’d been in Hous-

ton, a static song of not yet readiness, a street or

                                                                                          a

    neighborhood we knew. What will being dead

be like the abandoned boy was asking. The a-

  bandoned girl was asking as well, a disconsolate

                                                                                            duet

      thereby enacted, static itself grown sonorous,

  an articulate brogue regret. Between them and

    what being dead would be like there were nearly

nine minutes, a floating coffin had been leaving

                                                                                         the

    church when we tuned in… A light rain was

      coming down, a harbinger of rain to come, col-

loidal song of the not yet ready, Nub’s oncoming

  collapse. We born with a knee on our necks leaned

                                                                                                on

    the what-it-was window, a safety pin hummed in

the ground outside. It was a wet, gray play on words,

  the reign of our lives not mattering coming down,

                                                                                              no

more not mattering we yelled and clamored for, the

    numberless days of outrage it would take… The

  word “moment” was on every tongue, we who’d’ve

                                                                                                 rath-

    er been mystics or philosophic pissed off, so vi-

      cious we could see Nub’s way was. The birds had

come back having never left, a certain way they had

  of being not being there. We sat with big books open

                                                                                                   upon

    our laps. It was we who had gone in search of Mount

Qaf, a cyborg or a sunbird said to live there, the Simorgh

  they said it was… Where had we been when the birds

                                                                                                    who

      had never left got back, we ourselves who had nev-

  er been birds? How was it to be back having never

    left? So went the questions against the walls of our

                                                                                                  heads.

      But for the pictures the books on our laps bored us,

        quizzical couplets it was too late for, unsurprising

  rhyme. The word “moment” cut everyone’s lips and made

    them bleed, pecked by beaks it seemed, the birds having

                                                                                                             left

      and come back, the birds who were never not there…

  It was all another day in photo-op Nub, another day a-

    mong the so-called colorless ones. The birds were back

                                                                                                          hav-

      ing never gone, lives not mattering no matter, soul no

        one spoke of anymore. The abandoned boy was a white-

    haired lad raised among nestlings, all atop the earth atop

                                                                                                              the

      bull atop the fish, not what had been said but also that, no

                                                                                                                  sign

    the only one there

was