This is me mistaking bats for swallows.
It’s a new story. This is me trying
to change my mind. I’ve seen the door
my family takes: my father,
my cousins, my uncle. Ends
of rope, cold barrels gone hot & cold
again in the hand. It is a shocking thing
to know how possible finality can be:
the burden of it, weighing on backs.
Look up: hear that cheeping that comes
at dusk: focus on the sound of it: looking
for direction, avoiding obstacles.
There is no comfort in this.
This is me hoping to find something
in the resurrection moss. How it clings
to limbs that make arches over the roads
that I drive. This is me leaving the nail
in my tire. Filling my tire with air every ten days.
This is me leaving again. I’m scared
to answer the phone. This is me falling in love
with the northwest breeze on the right street,
a leaf swirling to the ground, the sound
of someone’s voice through something
plastic. The creeping shapes in my dark yard.
When they die they hurt us all. I’m worried
I wouldn’t even do that. Here comes the heat
again, brewing, pushing me into places. Here
is my little motor. Tweaked and ticking. This is me
looking up. This is me mistaking swallows for bats.
Copyright © 2025 by Kelan Nee. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 10, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
