last-passenger.html


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<h1 class="title">Last passenger</h1>


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