Your small, white feathers on
the back of the seat in my car
are still there. Or, rather, your coat’s.
The day you said, you’d have
another by Christmas.
Now winter’s here.
It must be coincidence,
at night when I open the balcony door,
and hear the jay repeating itself
from the nest,
appearing
from nowhere last spring,
stuck still on that branch,
like a bow.
I open the door as wide as it goes,
listen as it comes in.
And when I wake the room is very cold.
I take the car and I drive.
I pass field after field,
wrapped in frost, like a gift
I was never meant to open.