When there are more flies than buttermilk,
more nails than shoes, when we smell
our own stink on all the pillows,
when we can’t stand each other
or ourselves another minute longer,
that’s when we’ll pack up our scarves,
our autoclaves, all our other ridiculous
material trappings, and fly on up out of here
like a wisp in the sky or a spiral of swifts,
chattering and roosting, chattering again
in some other tree, someone else’s tree,
not far from here but far enough.