The Albatross

3/30/24

The day was bright and final. My knee was scraped, and so were you. Two little boys, one broken bike, and a high-line highway, right off the track. One boy hands him the Albatross and says, this is the thing that will solve the problem. This is the way we are. This will pump the tire, rewire the brakes, replace the chair… until we get out of here. The other boy just laughed, felt his knee, and said, lift me up and let’s get outta’ ‘ere! And so the other dropped the Albatross fine cross-wise against his shoulder and they walked off into the sunset. And so the Albatross laid on the side of the road, passed down from one street to another, one car to another, one bite to another. Animals grab it with their sharp teeth, like show animals in a circus sunset, unwilling to break character. It wears turtlenecks and any frames and anything to find a way through your curtain, into your home, and continued to breathe, but in both their minds a dream remained: a wreath of the Albatross’s beak, sheared off to tread its stead. the little boys didn’t know what it would mean, until the sun rose up and down again, and they called themselves men. Now (haha) each day they awake, bare-chested and babe’d, and shave their Albatross, all the way from their head, to their knees.