I’m a bird.
One day, the thru-hiker came by
and tried guessing my name.
She got it wrong.
But birdbrains know how to spot beauty over faults.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t
want to shit on a person.
Trembled perch, my bird’s eye view
made my warm blood migrate south.
I coo’d smalltalk the way birdwatchers in bars do
‘Tattoo! Tattoo!’
I don’t know if she ever understood my birdsong
She spoke about feminism, marketing, and interior design.
I sang to her poems, collected
her hair to make my nest more comfortable,
apologized that there was no room
for her in this tree, watched
our incompatibility hatch, like itineraries
and love notes tucked into the spine of a field guide.
You never climbed up here, Birdwatcher.
I left for a year
and came back.
She returned too
with a two-person tent,
slept under my nest,
I watched her tent rattle
with my head tucked under wing
coughed ‘nevermore!’
until sunrise
Two pairs of boots chilled in the wind.
I stretched my tongue out
and whistled a Lynard Skynard ditty
to this Floridian in all keys.
Struggled to be
beautiful, Darwin. Evolved
in minutes as she looked at
me, unfamiliar. All love lost
in her eyes, through binoculars
all my imperfections in
her year’s worth of paper experience.
I am looking at her through shrinking
tunnels, her eyes too small to see
what I take with me when I fly away.
Dimples, glimmering eyes, wet lips, soprano.
About the Author
Aaron Hopkins-Johnson is a writer in Phoenix, AZ. A long-time slam poetry competitor, a teaching artist, and the owner of Lawn Gnome Publishing, he is currently a single father and a copywriter. Discover more Arizona poets HERE.