A stranger is standing on my porch, looking into
my window. Hello? I call. I swing my hips down
from my bicycle. In the double shade of evening
and roof, a stranger turns to face me, then takes
my front steps in two bounds. He grabs my head
by my hair and kisses me with his whole face. What
the fuck, I want to say, but I gave away my mouth.
Then the robins swoop out from their nest above
the door, a nest they have slowly rebuilt all Spring,
and fly low over our heads. A stranger’s mouth is
on my mouth, his hands are on my mouth. I keep
my eyes open. I judge the air by robins. His mouth
is on my wrist, my watch, the face. Now is the time
to take mental notes, robins—about his stature, his
weight, his wire-rimmed glasses, his sandy hair,
his hollow skeleton pressing against my hips. But
in the wooden incandescence of the police station
an hour later, Officer Strawberry does not ask
about a stranger. He does not ask to see the bites
blooming across my joints. He leans over his desk
—pictures of lovely tripartite family, coffee mug
of pens, criminals’ dental records—and calls
my encounter ecstatic, almost Bacchic, in a voice
as hushed and gentle as if he could scare it away
by speaking too loudly, like a bird from a window
—a male robin, the pretty kind, the kind with a
breast deeper red than can be natural. I throb. I
see stars. I lean in, whisper: Red sky by night, sailor—