red-winged blackbird

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Perched with your hair fraying in my hands, 
I relearn the ways in which I can’t weave a 
braid: hands frozen and cramping, silken strands
left to whip in the wind. I listen to cognizant laughter
spray against walls in the same arch a wave would
make and I make it okay, make all my unforgivities 
disappear. I find myself dipping away all on my own,
hands seizing as they fly behind, always seizing, even
as they slip through your hair, loose and wanting. 
It is all I can think about: the lovely plume, the toss, the
wave, slipping you berries, red and ripe, blue stains
linking the tips of our fingers invisible in the sinking bloom.
In the dark like this I can hear the bright dawn cooing where
it dies in its cradle, hands reaching for soothing comfort,
wispy blinks tucking into the crease of my thigh, unaware
of the cacophony building in my stomach, the scorched lanes 
of my throat ferrying violins fiddling into frenzy mid-conversation,
fans flourishing silken runs over which horns defend against the 
other; I’m too blissed, truly, to motion them to calm, instead basking 
in embroidered delusions, fermata trembling in my hands, faces ballooning,
embouchures spluttering spit and condensation pooling in the bottom of 
bells tipping onto the mat —  the noise is all in my head. I can tie a braid. 
Can undo it, too, very simply but well enough. I just want to be the branch 
you return to — look, I even wrapped it in ribbon.