on Tuesdays she paints remembered words
out of blue swaths,
bundles match sticks
for later use,
and hangs abstracts up on walls
which know her by the pheromones of her desire.

she knows the birds who sing their sadness
over lost exits,
bearing young in the tree next to her.
bending, she whistles grubs up from burrows
sylphs surfacing to waiting beaks,
their futures certain.

sometimes, she builds rooms of sticks,
light flitting birdlike
from open landscapes,
as branches smile in the wind.

There, she wills herself thinner
as she waits for wind to spark a flame,
though she doesn’t know
where to go when it does.

Audrey Howitt lives and writes poetry in the San Francisco Bay Area. When not writing, she sings classical music and teaches voice. She is a licensed attorney and psychotherapist. Ms. Howitt has been published in Purely Lit: Poetry Anthology, Washington Square Review, Panoply, Muddy River Poetry Review, Total Eclipse Poetry and Prose, Chiaroscuro-Darkness and Light, dVerse Poets Anthology, With Painted Words, Algebra of Owls and Lost Towers Publications.