You ask me what I’ve learnt of love.

Let me tell you a story in reply:

Once there was a man who carried grief on his back

till it moulded to him like a tortoise shell.

Unable to look up, the lake was one of the few

beautiful things he could see. He’d go there to feed

the swans. One in particular

would nuzzle him with her beak, nip

his fingertips with small, serrated kisses.

When she performed her gliding ballet,

his stagnant eyes would sparkle.

When the man stopped coming, she swam

across the lake in search of him, carrying

the missing half of his heart in the crook

of her neck. How do I know?

I was that swan, towed by an invisible line.

I found him in his cottage bed,

flickering like a weak bulb.

I pulled a feather from my left wing,

pushed it into his left arm, the quill

scratching all I couldn’t say in red ink. I tattooed

his body with feathers, then used my beak

to smooth out his hunched back, lengthen his neck. 

When I was finished, he was a swan –

wings outspread, eclipsing the room,

neck like an arrow stretched in a bow,

and I was a woman, plucked raw.

So this is what I’ve learnt of love:

that it’s a flighty magic that requires

much piercing, peeling and exposing of softness.

When he returned from his first flight,

dripping feathers, neck unwinding, new down

needled my skin, and I knew how things would be:

sometimes he’s a swan, sometimes I am; sometimes

we hover somewhere in between.

Our lives rarely align, but when they do,

oh how we soar!