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+---
+title: Last passenger
+genre: verse
+
+id: last-passenger
+toc: "Last passenger"
+
+project:
+    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
+    class: autocento
+
+TODO: revise based on reading notes
+...
+
+| Memory works strangely, [spooling its thread][]
+| over the [nails of events][] barely related,
+| creating finally some picture, if we're
+| lucky, of a life---but more likely, it knots
+| itself, catches on a nail or in our throats
+| that gasp, as it binds our necks, for air.
+
+| An example: today marks one hundred years
+| since your namesake, the last living passenger
+| pigeon, died in Cincinnati.  It also marks
+| a year since we last spoke.  Although around
+| the world, zoos mourn her loss, I'm done
+| with you.  I mourn no more your voice, the first
+| sound I heard outside my body that reached
+| [into my throat and set me ringing][].  But that string---
+
+| memory that feels sometimes more like a tide
+| has yoked together, bound your voice to that bird,
+| the frozen, stuffed, forgotten pigeon---my heart
+| is too easy, but it must do---to blink, to flex
+| its unused toes, slowly thaw to the wetness
+| of [beating wings][], fly to me again, and alight,
+| singing full-throated, on my broken shoulder.
+
+[spooling its thread]: roughgloves.html
+[nails of events]: when-im-sorry-i.html
+[into my throat and set me ringing]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
+[beating wings]: cold-wind.html