From where I sit, I can look up to three black birds I brought back from L.A. They rest on a garland of sage that I’ve carried with me since I first started having sex with boys. It was an afternoon of singing for strangers in a strange land. Six years ago I was beginning to claim this city for my own. The birds look alert, like they could spread their fake wings and fly through the wall to some place I’ve never been. Pop out the other side of the white stucco and into a night sky with unfamiliar constellations. I can’t imagine them having any natural sound. I can imagine the computer hiss of an old modem maybe or the blurry tone of a rotary phone. Blackbird call home, blackbird eat the clouds, blackbirds that carry an analog name that I don’t know.
I’ve got days hanging from a dreaming tree, branches tearing upward and leaving contrails behind. The sound of shoes in an airport, the hallway, the picture I took there, the way the pictures were the same coming back. I fly and I follow by accident, by motorway, by the wrong direction.
This is a simple transition in my mind, Los Angeles to Vancouver to Toronto. There’s no disorder, only misplaced moments melding themselves into the best home movie. Hands in every shot, the evolution of devotion lagging behind the reality as my eyes sweep past out plane windows and I try to find my way home. There’s a dead child out there, hanging from a damned red moon, but I don’t see it, I’m blind from the panel glare, the colours that are printed in three little dots at a time. Something broken seems to flutter from my hair and the world changes, the person in the seat next to me has seen me cry.