yes, our music drowns on the tenement rooftop
as the cicadas droned hymns dedicated to libido
from trees at piercing decibels, shedding nymph exuviae,
mourning warmth and dirt womb
flaunting stained glass wings—
i wonder, do they ever fly?

no, she says, at least not well.
she used to put them on her shoulder in summer
along streambeds before knotting them to balloons.
string-to-flesh, she’d make them fly.
like ground to sky, like up from down, was inevitable,

as fated as abandoned skin left on bark,
a skeletal leaf, rotting for dear death or death after,
moon-drunk, drunk-drunk, in elongated breaths,
we listen to their endless cries, now
the morning’s cold or maybe early afternoon.