A Sigh Made of Misspent Choices by CL Bledsoe

A dumber bird never crashed

into clear glass, my heart,

long shed of feathers, a dead

thing’s milk, shoved too far

back into the fridge, sour

and frozen. It’s never going

to be of use. It’s taken almost

as long to realize that as it has

to grow the thing. Plain as death,

it lingered too long on the lines

wind forms in dust, thinking

they were words. It skitters

when it should prance, cowers

most days, and never perks up

when its name is called. Throw

a stone any way, and some

smarter heart will sue. Formed

of fat and cloudstuff, unable

in its best year to see the creases

in its toes. I wish I could say

it’s biding, waiting on a phone

call, planning something

worthwhile, but the mountain

rumble roar belies the truth. All

I ever asked was that some soft

hand smudge the glass. Even

this is too much, I know.

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than twenty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, Trashcans in Love, and his newest, Grief Bacon, as well as the Necro-Files novel series and the flash fiction collection Ray's Sea World. Bledsoe co-writes the humor blog How to Even, with Michael Gushue located here: https://medium.com/@howtoeven His own blow, Not Another TV Dad, is located here: https://medium.com/@clbledsoe He’s been published in hundreds of journals, newspapers, and websites that you’ve probably never heard of. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.