There’s an amorphous bird cloud this morning,
wavering, parting, conglomerating
against the cotton candy sky
the way my bones seem to do,
as they find a shape
as impossible as the birds
coalescing into one.
I feel them as they land
on electrical wires, like ribs
grasping at the atmosphere: lungs
stilling themselves for the bird’s sake.
When they’re disentangled like this
I can feel their calm, I can feel
the anticipation of them
preparing to scatter again.
Kali Paszkiewicz (they/ them) is a queer, neurodivergent poet and librarian. Poetry for Kali is both a lens in which to view the world and medicine to heal from past trauma. Their work has been published in Queen Mob’s Tea House, Headwaters, THAT literary review, and Flora Fiction. Their first complete collection of poems, The Moth that Haunts the Laundry Room, was self-published in 2020.
Angel Rust 