Right when I left home, the sky went dark.
Not where I could see it. But the whole kingdom
of animals confused on the almost-other side of the world.
I spent my first year away unsettled. By May,
my wet hair parted like a lightning strike.
Outside this house, a mockingbird cries
under the streetlamp pleading for company.
The false light keeps him awake, makes him
stupid. Just last night, in Spain, a crowd of fair-goers
lit a bull’s horns and then loosened his chain.
They clapped and laughed when he rammed
into his own post, skull smashed but still afire.
Back then, I thought I was dying. It was the end
of hope. Panic set in to lose my virginity. This time
around, you and I plan a trip to the zoo. The moon
should pass right between us and the sun. Shadow
and starshine shaping an hourglass, the elephants
and ostriches become nocturnal, the entire menagerie
a mirror image of itself.