I am a very impatient person, which is why you are mute and kind. I only wish to speak without being interrupted or countered. I only wish to stare into your clearly good eyes, empty yet full and know that in them lies truth, and so it is truth, then, that I will use.

Your eyes, I imagine, are taken from a dog. Specifically, my German Shepherd, who, one night, told me all of her secrets so that, of course, and politely, I told her mine. "It's just that . . . I'm not very good at singing," I said, and she stared back, almost dumb-struck, almost all-knowing, those eyes revealing nothing that I could judge myself on.

And so I say to those eyes, now your eyes,
I wish I was a fish. Or a summer tree.

One evening I was sitting at my kitchen table and it was storming and grey and all that comes. And the window to my left was covered by a short sheer curtain except for one sliver at the top which allowed me to peek outside. What I saw was a tree being blown side to side, leaves smacking erratically and happy about it, too, and I whispered to its root and stem,
"I wish I was you."