Cascade

in between,
i step onto our back porch, concrete slab piled high with tired coffee tables and
paint-spotted mugs. the robin sitting on the telephone wire begins to sing.
and at first i cannot place it. and i am filled with a desperate longing, a sort of
memory-cascade, and i recognize the sparrow’s lilting as Frank X Gaspar’s poem Nausicaä.

i feel sick inside, frozen under the metal awning, shrouded in the sweet-smelling hazy
cascade. The robin nears the end of his song, and without meaning to, i cry out, ‘please don’t
stop!’ He turns to me suddenly, looking me right in the eyes with his one beady head.

what world?

and he flies straight towards me, an arrow in the late July light, flapping and clawing,
right up to my face. In this one split second. the memory-haze rushes out of me, as if pressurized,
or through a whooshing tube, and with the air finally clear, the Robin is revealed for what he
truly is. I open my mouth, and I bite down.

there is no name for the god of fragments.

By: Pete Hyberger

Pete Hyberger is a Nebraska native residing in Brooklyn, NY, with their fiancée and two cats. They have previously been published in The Spotlong Review and Eleven and a Half, and have been a featured reader at the Herbal Supplements reading series.