I return
to the window you sit beside,
your glossy blue eyes
splinter stained glass into fractured light.
Your coffee cools,
restless in its rough ceramic home,
until a swallow slams it down your hollow throat;
a raw, dark path
where jelly donuts I used to make
once glided down.
My teal wings hover nearer to see
her next to you,
our granddaughter,
whose feet patter through puddles of questions.
Hazel eyes lift to your wrinkled face,
trying to understand why her grandpa’s gaze
drifts to where I flicker.
You whisper “Marilyn,”
the familiar syllables slice silence open.
Out spills the sweetness of fifty-three years
seasoned with caramel and butter,
braided through curses at the Red Sox,
wrapped in grease-smudged fingerprints
on Rummikub tiles,
your cheating hands leaving their trace.
I press my beak to the chilly pane,
longing to slip back in the walls
that guard
first steps and spilled milk,
tongues scraping porcelain bowls clean of
ice cream sundaes melting
into ordinary Sundays.
She shifts onto your lap.
Her braids brush your elbow,
Her r’s tumble awkwardly into w’s.
You gather her close to anchor her questions,
she sees the shimmer of my wings,
but doesn’t see me inside them
the way you do.
Until,
Time
turns her braids into brushed-out curls,
and her r’s ring clear.
I see her alone now, older
and settled in your favorite chair,
the one that held your back
through a decade of window-watching
for me.
Your coffee cup sits empty
Then
another bird drifts beside me,
its cobalt wings echoing my teal,
in the flash of blue, I know it’s you.
your eyes alive again in feathers.
Only then, she understands
why my visits once made you cry,
and why the echo of our flight
yours and mine
now gathers in her eyes
Together, our small chirps
glint in the amber of her hazel eyes
shimmering with unshed salt:
the sorrow that lived in you
now rising in her,
not heavy, but inherited,
a thread of love
carried forward
by us who find our way home
on wings.