birdhouse in a birdhouse

i watch a video of a woman who lives
inside another woman's mouth. she has
all kinds of little gadgets to make 
this like possible. there is a window 
in the cheek from which she talks
to birds. the birds are not birds but 
dreams. as a child i was a keeper of empty 
birdhouses. i painted them & never hung them.
instead, they sat in the house as homes
for ghosts. sometimes i would put my eye
up to the opening to see the birds 
hard at work. they were making another house
& then another & another. i am well aware
of how small you can get & still find
a place to sleep. sometimes there feels
like there are too many wounds to attend to.
i pull the tick seed & ragweed from 
the yard. each extraction a little lost tooth.
the birds enter our house not through the chimney
but through the walls. they are not bound
by the boring physics we have. i tell my lover,
"i have a plan" by which i mean i am less certain
than ever. i start building a bird house 
inside our house. i wait for geese & ostriches 
to come. penguins & kiwi birds. i want 
the weird ghosts. the ones who no one thinks
to write stories about. soon i am a bird 
& we are working day & night. my lover asks me,
"when will this be over?" i do not tell him
the truth which is, "it will not be over."
instead we get takeout. a pizza with a bird house
right in the center. our world is such a mangled home.
no one knows where & how to sleep.
so we stay up. we carve another window.
one right through the roof. it begins to rain. 
it's raining birdhouses. raining ghosts. 
i collect as many as i can. my lover asks, 
"don't we have enough?" some of the houses
are the size of my pinky nail. i answer,
"i am not sure yet how small this life will make me."