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40 Buttered Toast Someone who takes signs from the flight of birds says dreaming of toast is an auspicious omen. Quietly, before she takes the morning bus to work, I tell her she painted our claw-foot tub red, curled inside the tusk of an elephant, sang and sewed our buttons back. From high up there, a bird carried her letters, telling me he charged faster than water ran. I buttered toast and closed it back inside the bird’s beak. Late to work, she tells me to write the rest down, save her dried dirt on the elephant’s back, how cold she wrote the inside of a tooth could be. Birds take the crumbs of toast I toss for squirrels, but that night we take our dinner outside and hope we’ll see one attempt to shimmy, hard at work up the slippery red pole of the birdhouse, search brave, upside-down for seeds. By then, I’ve forgotten the gray smell of elephant; the flight of that bird, and draw a bath, ivory tooth to hold her after work. ...

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