Born into a Bird

What is it that makes me think, we are the same?
The red winged black bird raging along 
the tree line, a light-headed descent in the heat of the sun, 
shoulders setting fire to the riverbank.

Grab ahold of the most recent memory: 
marsh grasses grazing belly feathers, the air 
rich with salt and cicada squalls like ghosts 
in the daylight. The boardwalk is a winding smile, 

a corn snake in the field. I once held  
a snake at the county fair. My heartbeat calmed 
as it hugged my wrist with its tail. 
We were both thin bodied and licking the air, 

in search of a moment: two kids  
in the woods sitting cross legged on the moss,
arranging twigs into constellations. 
The rasp in your voice is the rustle of leaves overhead

and your eyes two, wet stones plucked from the stream. 
And this—the last of our stories—light as a feather,
carried into the blue, born into a bird,  
flying like a child, and dying like a breeze. 

ALISON AMATO

Alison Amato (she/her) lives in Maryland and studied creative writing at Florida Atlantic University. Her work has been published in Sweet, South Florida Poetry Journal, Thimble Literary Magazine, and Hawai’i Pacific Review.