Space by Matt Costello

A silence unhampered by wind.
Birds hovering at the feeder.
You do not move,
are afraid to move.
Everything has converged
to form a teetering balance.
If you move, or even breathe,
the birds fly away, the branches stir
as if shaken by a current of air.
So you don’t move.
The birds eat at will.
The chair strains not to squeak beneath you.
You think the birds look at you,
but they are only looking for movement,
which you’ve sworn to yourself
you would not provide.

And then (something)
slams into your life.
It doesn’t make the birds flinch,
but inside you something new
has come to live,
where before there was
a space no one imagines is there,
at least not as easily as

hard disk C: type: 47 dot com
main processor, floppy drive A:
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www dot 80 more megs:

enough to fit your life in,
and the lives of all your friends.
your belongings: a bed, a table,
a television, even the books
were stacked and set inside,
and it was like you had just
laid the first brick of a wall
that until then you did not know
you were going to have to build.

The birds are feasting
and constantly on watch.
Nothing will fool them,
but this new event
has branded in you an unknown place,
and becomes the first thing
you store away there.
It is your aunt, dying.
You didn’t know her that well.
This is the first thing.
There is a lot more space.
The birds will never end up there.
They are twitching ravenously.
They are risking their lives.
They have heads of statues.
They fly away in fear.
They have been through this before.