For iris

Sparrow Womack

in the summer

she spoke of swift boxes.

a high place for birds that fly and never touch down.

it took me seventeen years to plummet

back to the earth that i first walked on.

in the summer

we battled slugs in the back garden.

we climbed up the hill, through nettle shrubs and past the old oak

and the beacons burned bright across the city.

she showed me photographs of therapia

when everything was black and white.

long before her blue curtain waved in the window of that old stone house.

in the summer

in the alley

we were greeted by a fox. he told us to look out across the city,

familiar to the heart but so different to the eye. the trees were now overgrown,

and the blackberries were not yet ripe.

so we ate bread and kimchi

and hung the laundry to dry.

seventeen years and, still,

the swifts soared above us,

making their home in the air.

their bones hollow like mine —

filled with everything simple and good.