I perch where the eaves dip low to eavesdrop,

watch you tend the earth-your hands,

kissed by soil, coaxing green from nothing.

My wings itch to shed their symmetry, to trade hollow bones for the heft of your pulse,

to feel a heartbeat that doesn't flutter.

Each dawn, I offer you a song plucked from the deep throat of starlings. You call it chirping.

I call it the only language I own. 

your laughter spills like white seeds, and I swoop to catch what your world cannot keep crumbs of sound, warm as your deck intense light pooling my iridescent throat.

The other sparrows' gossip in the pines,

clutch their nests like secret's.

Why preen for a creature who walks

where roots knot the dark?

But I've memorized the geography of your 

bulge,

how sweat maps your spin at noon a terrain I'd trade my feathers to navigate.

At dusk, I leave you a worm on the sill,

quill sharpened.

you pocket it, smiling, as if it's a trinket 

not a love letter spelled in barbs and vane.

When winter comes, I'll starve my flock's instinct

to fly south, to risk frostbite for the chance to glimpse your breath fogging the glass, 

your palm pressed where my shadow 

lingers.

Some love is built for cages.

I am all beak and trembling down,

a creature to wild to land on your wrist,

too tame to stop circling the ground

where your footprints bloom like open nest

I dream of the day your powerful might is thrusted upon me.