Poison mushrooms 
and other accidental acts of suicide.

1.
We sold our tents to the blue jays
so that they would stopping calling us
names. Slept on each others shoulders and
split every pack of oats and honey granola bars in half
until we ate the wrappers too-- shiny-plastic enveloped 
our tongues to savor the last pieces of
food we had packed. 
We had wanted to hike
all the way on the Appalachian spine 
to escape the brownies we left burning in
the oven--
We only made it across the street
to the playground where we both re-learned 
our bodies as hunter gatherers.
We ate Galerina mushrooms not knowing they would
take five days to turn our kidneys to limestone.
2.
We didn't know better. We only knew how to make
brownies and how to pull up the grass
at night like a quilt.
I used to love blue jays until
I met them. They spattered hair gel 
in their crests and elbowed their brothers
when they came up with another way
to say "whore"-- flapped their wings at
us like fly swatters when we tried to sleep
underneath the big Red Oak tree where
all the birds live out of blank craft store
tree houses and only the cardinals
still remember how crochet nests.
3.
The cardinals shared their twigs with the blue birds
who were left to nest on the ground next to us.
They were too shy for branches
and didn't want to know what other words
the blue jays could come up with to say "ugly"
or "small" and "whore".
We've always been too shy for branches--
us and the blue birds-- only the blue birds
didn't eat the mushrooms.
4.
They taught us how to make a crossed-leg-- 
soil-kneed existence-- build our
own soft wrists from pieces of moth tails
left over from the summer-- made
mosaics from broken bark across our chest--
We learned how to make brownies from
cut squares of moss-- let the sun simmer
the dirt warm and soaked and moist--
lift each slice-- dug out with your finger nails.
We were creative enough to live on imagined taste. 
We carved pumpkins-- fed the seeds to
the blue birds so that they could grow
the gourds in their bellies-- shoot
vines from their beak and get sown back into
the moss where they nested. They had warned
us about the mushrooms-- but we pretended 
not to remember them-- counted days on our
fingers before we fell asleep--
5.
Woke up like always-- on each others
shoulders to the smell of blue jays wings
and the rising body count of the dead Oak leaves
around our ankles. 
We had liked the taste of the Galerina mushrooms.
It was the blue jays who told us we could eat them.
And they didn't taste like mushrooms.
They had tasted like gum drops or licorice twists
or not-burned brownies slightly uncooked in the center--
oozing like moss and soil.
We had gathered our way into the dirt with
the blue birds and the other
animals that burrow in the winter-- taken
by the mushrooms-- shifted our insides
into the dust of limestone--
We could still hear the blue jay laughing as
we felt our shoulders grow together.
Become moss.
Sleep under Red Oak trees.
Become mushrooms.