After my first year away
\nI came home to find a charm
\nof hummingbirds living
\nin my bedroom. They liked
\nthe purple bougainvillea on the porch
\nand the fuchsia in the garden
\nmy mother explained
\nadmiring the birds\u2019 good taste.
\nAs if the flowers weren\u2019t enough
\nshe brought them insects every morning.
\nI slept in the guest room down the hall
\nand kept my distance
\nsensing something fragile.
\nBut the night before I left
\nI stood in my old doorway
\nsmelling the cold air drifting in
\nand surveyed the streaks of semi-solid waste
\na desk of notebooks, lanyards, pens
\nfaded posters of faded bands
\nthe violin I rarely practiced
\na stack of out of favor sweaters
\na pair of shoes so cool I couldn\u2019t wear them
\nand there in the top shelf of the closet
\nnext to where I\u2019d kept my weed
\na nest of twigs and leaves and spider silk.
\nOut buzzed a long-billed protector
\nto hover at me with a wet black eye
\nfor one long moment of bird vibrato.
\nI shut the door as gently as I could
\nand you already know I never opened it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After my first year away I came home to find a charm of hummingbirds living in my bedroom. They liked the purple bougainvillea on the porch and the fuchsia in the garden my mother explained admiring the birds\u2019 good taste. As if the flowers weren\u2019t enough she brought them insects every morning. I slept in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"issue":[11],"coauthors":[220],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n