I am sitting in my childhood bedroom watching a stellar jay preen on the lowest branch of the apple tree I planted on Arbor Day in kindergarten

You are in the yard sawing PVC pipes
and wrapping them in duct tape.

You don’t know I’m watching, but I am
your child, on the porch, which I like to pretend is a ship

and I have nothing but       
an apple and a plastic hammer.
I don’t know if this memory is yours or mine.     
Did you mean

for me to see you pick
a pipe up off the grass, swing it into the bird’s breast?  

Not everything you do
means something. Not everything

 you do           

means the world. I have nothing
but an apple and a hammer.

The breast may be soft, mallow, might be
stiff with muscle, the bird   
might be a statue of a bird.

You won’t let me touch a bird. I drop
my toys on the weathered planks. I cup my hands.

---

Hannah/Hans Kesling is a poet living in Portland, Oregon. They have a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from Lewis & Clark College (2013) and an MFA in creative writing with a focus in poetry from Indiana University (2019). You can find their work in new words {press}, The Elevation Review, About Place Journal, Arkana, The Same, T(OUR) Magazine, Gobshite Quarterly, and Oregon Poetic Voices.