To kill a nightingale. To play with

its dead body. Flap its dead wings.

To throw a dead nightingale and

watch it fly through the air like

a stone. To juggle dead nightingales.

i tried to sketch the moon from memory

last night but came up short tried to capture

the nuanced dark basalt in graphite

I am a descendant of trees and birds.

To be kind is to tell the stories of falling

embers. This morning I walk into the land again,

so, eerie now, burnt and blackened, deadened by

flame and ash. Just like the others, I think of moon-

scapes, places where nothing can survive.

When I tell this story, I start by saying: I’m not the victim. I say this less because I believe that that it is true and more to beat the listener to the punch. We are rarely the villain in our own stories; we may place ourselves somewhere in between villain and victim. I made a bad choice and I got hurt. I deserved it, many would say. Sometimes I think that I deserve pain, deserve to be treated poorly, but I only have these thoughts on bad days.

Did we ever cook together?

No.

You would have procured the produce with your quick, efficient movements, exchanging a smile and a few words with the local grocer at the checkout counter. And she would remember you, her broad-shouldered, sharp-jawed regular.

Sefa was twenty-one, svelte and petite, with deep round eyes, a long nose, thin lips, and big teeth—a perfect Disney mouse love-interest type. An urban planning student at Complutense, Sefa had grown up near Ventas and riding shotgun in her father’s taxi. Before the last weekend of the semester, she told me she knew Madrid “intimately,” and reached across the table. Sefa placed her hand on my hand, her fingertips on my knuckles, dipping down between them before rising again. I had never even held a girl’s hand.

Everyone who worked there enjoyed the work they did, for the most part. It was a graphics interface firm. They specialized in the interfacing of graphics, which usually was more than enough explanation for anyone outside the firm who inquired about what happened within it.

The morning after the first nightmare, Hannah assured me it was a good sign. “Teeth falling out in dreams means you’re on a path of rebirth.”