A flighted likeness of my own mind

Hello

I don't know how to greet you...
I only know that I have always thought of you as something
I could hold in my hands
Unnaturally as

A fistful of shuddering minnows before
They die
Puncture their own bones
Against me
And secrete the abalone glaze of their eyes
Into a film on the dock

Until now I have since kept you as
A flighted likeness
Of my mind

Knowing too, the cold of a multiplied sunset
Ending in frost and space between rivers

The fragrance of a sweetly decomposing
Salmon berry, telling time for reddening chinook to end
Sweeping like a wind in the parts between birches
Or of its stain that I would palm and carry

Thinking also of endings and beginnings
In such order
When gulls eat the cartilage and fur
From animals put on the silted banks
Of the knik
A place where the sun can fall deeply
And I
Build fires

Here, amongst the darkening light
Of our skins

As I am no longer alone,
And we hear the chickadees being the trees
And the loons wanting to make night

Could it be appropriate now,
While twilight is flaming

To finally know your name?

Shaina Lopez-Collazo
2012