How do we see the back of the parakeet if all else is total
blackness, a dark so deep a pixel couldn’t pierce it? Is it
in front of the bird or all around it? Is it some avian beacon
pressing its exact greenness into a sea of nothing else? How
should we reckon with never seeing its face, eyes as useless
as a cave newt’s? What does color mean in a world with all
the lights out? Is the greater mystery what a beak-slipped
song would ricochet off of? In this, I understand. I write this
to you across the time behind me like the nothing before
that pristine plumage, like before you slipped off the road and out
of your name and your voice became as empty as bird-view,
as quiet as a night without cars, or reflectors, or stars, or night.
This is how I know the bird is still singing to no one it can
find. This is how I know how much nothing can hold.
