Desire Discourse

by Sun Paik

It has been hours and they haven’t left my windowsill,
       the magpies I mean, whose beaks peck the melted storm,

whose talons tap tap tap the puddles like they’re auditioning for
       Singin’ in the Rain, their sharp toes wicking away

flecks of dirt scattered on the water. How long
       must they have waited to dance like this?

How impatient must they have been,
       their wings panting against the heat of August,

then stilling in the city’s delay of winter?
       And then, finally, to receive the arctic jazz,

the peppered carpet of sooted snow. I swear,
       in one moment you see them hopping around and the next

you are remembering the assembly at your school gym
       sitting with the other first graders in neat, fidgety rows

with Hello, my name is stickers stuck to our polo shirts,
only to have it be followed with Astronaut, or Ballerina,

as if in passing we would wave to each other and say,
       Hello, Guinness World Record Breaker! Hello, Zoologist!

or at the cafeteria, we would lean against the long plastic tables, asking
       Hey, Beauty Queen, could you pass me a napkin, pretty please and thank you.

I had forgotten how easy the work of dreaming used to be,
       how, like birds, we rebelled against the air’s given song and thought

nothing of it, how we ate soft jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off,
       and ran in the sugar-rush high over to whatever sandbox or patch of grass

available to us. How we bowled over from laughter and collapsed on the ground,
       letting the earth stain our name tags with dirt, and still felt untouchable.