Some odd stream of oak trees
line the sidewalk like a phrase
that never leaves the mind—
“I love you” or “I have love for you.”
He kissed me this morning
beneath the gray quilt of late winter
like he loves me, and there’s a difference
in the work of nature today.
Sometimes difference is simple,
but today there’s a woman at the bus stop
screaming, I hate you you fucking nigger.
I watch as sunlight crumbles
against Lake Washington, watch a bird
that appears, at first, to be a raven,
but with a subtle twitch of its blouse-wing,
turns crow as it lands next to a puddle of trash.
Is the woman angry or frustrated?
There’s a freckling of pigeons,
tired of the leftover Starbucks. There’s a man
grabbing the ass of another looking at me
as if I were a forest to be lost in.
There’s always a way hunger declares itself.
Is that what it means to be Black in Seattle,
standing here admiring the rotting moan
of car horns as if nothing were happening?
The white man next to me looks at me
and shakes his head, mouth shedding a smirk.
A police car sirens a group of women
not to cross—loud red fowl. If wondering,
the woman is Black. Does that make a difference?
On my phone, I read a caption that says,
“Missed two but got four. Next time they won’t
be so lucky,” referencing four birds, each shot
in the head or the unseemly breast.
Does knowing the birds are American crows
make a difference? There’s smoke climbing
out the sewer. There’s a child laughing
or crying. In the article beneath, 14-year-old
George Stinney Jr. is killed by electric chair
for being accused of murdering two white girls.
His Blackness is never mentioned. This matters.
It matters more than the shot crows,
more than the woman, who by now is so quiet,
a city of her own. As I get on the bus,
I wonder if she has a son. I want a son,
which might be weird given I am newly in love,
given that we are Black. Isn’t it irresponsible
to raise a child in this city of mammoth hills
and Mt. Rainier teething away at the sky?
I think I will die before I get the privilege.
Sometimes I slush through this city
and feel like I have died already.