none of which is to say I’ve spoken a word of the canary colony to anyone. instead, I’ve used my credentials to gain access to the city which passes with a comet through the night at such a speed the buildings in the city each shine gold. twenty-nine stories underground the warehouse walls of the city’s intestine throb with a crayola yellow and all the PA speakers effuse chalky bird dust. sunflower seeds and icy breath, the bones of the forest in a plaza of the city we’d been trained to forget had been its capitol. we breathed the dust enough to be transfixed and then stood around in our sleepwear, waiting in purgatorial lines for more channels to comatose to. once I got so happy I couldn’t smile any harder. I was the only one in the restless club while the constant heather glare of the place sold a lot of umbrellas. some of the older patients adapted a beach club named the sungrazers while I’d been conspiring to break free. building capacity to pass through warehouse layers without being gassed. sliding past elevator guards in the melting gravity like dropping from the high dive. holding my air. by the time I reached the surface I was so lightheaded I began to name the constellations whirling throughout the comet’s golden turrets and capitol buildings. the gutted linen shops and bank lights falling over darkened alleys and recently broken glass reflecting back to space the image of itself I can’t remember if I couldn’t breathe or not. it wasn’t that I couldn’t not recall whose bones I’d breathed in the speakers’ dust, but that the nomenclature for any comet is both the first and last in its fate of events. I had been forced to breathe the names in the dust and that had been reason enough for escape. and the outside lights above the city were just so very clean