The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: I’ll Buy You a Bird Instead by Natalie Easton

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Silver Bells

I.

You wouldn’t let me place a gift for you
underneath the tree. In your final weeks,

you touched the wind chime in our favorite shop—
I didn’t dare buy it for you. Later I went back

and claimed it for your friend. I wonder why
you wanted it; you knew you wouldn’t see

your flowers open up beneath. By January
you’d known so long that your words burned

as they flew, like birds in a dream: how they drop
swift and unwanted, like ash on the mountain.

II.

It was not goodbye enough that you bit your lip
and showed me how to make your meatloaf.

I was waiting for a revelation—instead,
you fed me incessantly. You smoked.

That comforting sound, like a hot coal kissed.
All your things still smell of cigarettes.

In my dreams, you’re always sick and angry.
In one, I bought you a fish tank; we waited

for the guppies to have babies. In another,
I planted you a garden whose every flower cast

its plastic gaze upon the sun. Not one time
in all these nights have you sparked a look at me.

But once, on a whim, I lifted the phone
before it rang, and your voice ran through

like you’d been waiting. “Don’t be ridiculous,”
you gently scoffed.

                             “Of course we can still speak.”

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