all their blood. I want to lick their smooth arches.

My lover says he could do it if he wanted to,

It's all about weight displacement. He ruins

every illusion by staring at his own hands. I ruin

every illusion by threading it to hunger. When

Eric the Great was twelve, he ran away to earn

money for his family. He returned to his mother,

his pockets filled with coins, and said, Shake me,

I'm magic. So often our bodies betray us, just look

at our feet, how they point to what we desire.

Sometimes I don't look until I'm headed out

the door. I've got so much to do. Overgrown

boy. Tight smile. My father was always arriving

late, confirming his face in every window's reflection.

The wind that finds its way into this city

is the cruelest, the kind that searches for our

soft spots. Pulsing tender skulls. My mother

called to say, Go on and eat. I can't be late when

everything I reach for moves further back. The lake,

folding its skin. I only know that a mirror is silver

because I've seen one scuffed. All my spoons

are weak-necked, but I was wrong when I said

the most desperate noise was either silverware

clattering in a fast-pulled drawer, or a swing sets'

sharp chirp. Sometimes it's hard to know the built

from the grown. Sometimes it's our fault. The serinette

was created to teach canaries how to sing correctly.

And when my lover tells me I'm correct to love him,

I know the noise isn't metal at all. It's not the rattle

of coins, but the scrape of fingers picking them up.

As an adult, Eric the Great changed his name to Houdini

to honor Jean Robert-Houdin, who would open his palms

to the audience and say, Nothing here now—neither anything,

nor anybody, before pulling his wife from the ether.