[Hear the author read this poem]

You see I loved one person. There were elms to prove it.
My memory of it, clean. Like recalling a sky the day
She and all of her hair were removed. How the sky is both

Felt and unfelt. Thing and idea you see the traffic was beautiful
That day we were not there to see it. Thing and idea she said
Do you have that dress because if you do burn it I will never

Raise my arms to it. Her condition worsened. Rode
An airplane to see her in my head. Could only focus on the sky
That day. Was not urgent. World over the hill flashed once.

It occurs to me that my heart with its thin legs has collapsed
Under its heft, its fall predisposed. That it breaks is a simple rumor.
How she sat there, spring burning through the seasons to spring.

How she handed me a package and said The seams are all wrong.
Come the migration of geese, are they steady are they south are they
Overhead as she convulses alone years later. I took the package

Opened it under a tree. Around this time there was so much sky
Throat filled with it. Breath of cotton, breath of her travels the road
Forsythia-lined. I split open the gift as if inside were a kingdom out.