Portrait: Last Night in London

Apart from her body, I remember the birds—

we would wake at the same time, as night came down   among the purple trees—

her body, my body, and the birds,

      all waking

at one moment,   she in silence rising to sit by the mirror     and the portrait she would not show me.

  While she painted, I walked in the park past graffiti that said call your mother     and nodding policemen with red noses,

asking myself why I would hope for a home   in someone’s slowly falling out of love with me—

while chatty British women left the mall   with bags brushing their thighs, a sound like breath.

    P——, I learned a secret before I left: the birds   never flew off, but fell silent     when someone was near—the color of dust,

they just   disappeared,

until deep in my quiet, if no one passed,   the whole tree would speak to itself again.