The night she walked to the house she held a string; on the other end, fifty-three feet in the air, a kite. Wind provided the aerodynamics. Does every collaboration need to be explained? She tied the string to the mailbox left the kite to float until morning. Every night this happens. She sleeps, I listen, darkness slides through us both. The next morning the string still curved into the sky but the kite was gone. This was the morning newspapers announced the Mona Lisa was stolen. This was the morning it snowed in Los Angeles, the morning I wore gloves to pull from the sky fifty-three feet of frozen string.
From Death Obscura, published by Sarabande Books. Copyright © 2011 by Rick Bursky. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.