The boy and I make nice
because there’s too much suffering
and send messages through the flight patterns
of migratory birds
and when his answers caw
at my window I open it up
and cut cloacas in my breasts
to let the
fat out
and I tell him “I’ll get you your surgery someday
I promise”
and he says “black feathers
blue feathers
south.”

Noelle McManus is a writer-poet-linguist from Long Island, New York. They have been published in The Women’s Review of Books, Cathexis Northwest, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Ghost City Press’s My Loves anthology, among other venues. You can find more of their work at noellemcmanus.com.