Your Last Orbit

did you just die.

I can’t hear those wings anymore. that beating gone silent. you were bashing your skull against the IKEA lamp I got last week. a circle of white light pulling you into the tin shade, electric heat.

I sat here at the typewriter, sick with the flu, fingers hitting the keys. listening to the buzz under the metal. you stopped once. landed shaky on that chunk of old gouda left out for a mouse that never comes. you folded your wings for a second and sat on the edge of the rind.

then back at it.

ramming the bulb again, looping in the glow. orbits around that phony moon until the room went quiet. no more flutter. you dropped straight down. a dry speck landing on the desk with a flat plop. that was the last loop.

I’m in this Kreuzberg hole, sucking the last warm swallow from a vodka bottle. the stuff that burns going down. I look at the speck of you on the wood, a tiny casualty of a light that tricks everything. no toast to the desk. the lamp stays hot.

last orbit fades slow,
cheap vodka burns the throat,
the shade still buzzing.