The Opposite Bird

You who twirled a pencil (like a needle) behind my sixth-grade brain, blew out all the candles on my birthday cake, sang me to sleep every Sunday in the backseat; whose redness reminded me of me (all that panic in the tall grass); whose silence blew along the fence while the trucks went by (one after another they went by); whatever you needed, whatever happened between us: it was winter, the windows glistened and the flock swallowed up the sky.