We were sitting on the couch in the darktalking about first pets, when I told him how,as a girl, I kept a blue and white parakeet I letfly around the house and, sometimes, outside,where he'd land on the branches of pineand eucalyptus, balancing between seedpodsand spines. Only, while I was telling it,my companion began to stroke, very lightly,the indent of my palm, the way you do when you'resitting in the dark with someone you've never kissedbut have thought about kissing. And I told himhow my bird would sit on a high branch and sing,loudly, at the wonder of it—the whole, green world—while he traced the inside of my arm with his fingers,opening another world of greenery and vines,twisting toward the sun. I loved that bird for his singing,and also for the way his small body, lifted skyward,made my life larger. And then it was lip-to-lip,a bramble, and it was hard to say who was who—thumb to cheek to chest. The whole ravening.When I told him I did not clip my bird's wings,I was talking about hunger. When he pressed mehard against the back of the couch, named a litanyof things he'd do to me, I wanted them all.I, too, have loved to live in a body. To feel the wayit lifts up the octaves of sky, cells spiralingthrough smoke and mist, cumulus and stratus,into that wild blue. And though I knewthere was always a hawk somewhere in the shadowsready to snatch his heart in its claws, still,I couldn't help letting that parakeet free.