sky packing

from you i learned how
to fold the sky like a t-shirt.
how to take nothing with you
when you leave. back then i was
trying to gender so hard. i watched feathers
fall in the alley between our apartment building
& the bed bug place next door. i wore
button-up shirts that left me feeling
like i was always choking on a word. 
in my room, a door opened in the ceiling like
a portal. i fed it hair & the one tooth
i lost & never told anyone about. 
on the night i left the city i took the box cutter
you left on the counter. i was going to leave it too
but i climbed up on the roof & hacked off
a little gill of a pulsing sunset. 
i used it to breathe underwater
for the next years. i am trying my best
to not be a person who misses my phantom genders.
the lives i could be living. i still have the sky.
i put it in my mouth where the tooth
used to be. i call you from the portal door.
feathers still fall only less frequently. i eat them in the field.
the sky gets bigger every year. so much harder
to catch & keep. my lover & i talk about
where we would go & what we would take
if we had to leave suddenly. this country is
eating us. how soon, i don't know. if i could go back
i would refuse to leave. i would have taken
everything. the sky & the clouds all stuffed
into my little volvo with the sputtering engine.
the emptiness that once was the sky 
looking down on the roads & the railways. 
then, when i got where i was going 
i would have called you weeping. maybe i would 
have told you sooner. opened the sky up & let it pour.