Not a bird. A name pressed in early,
like ink driven into grain that never forgets pressure.
Bone learns first. Then balance. Then falling.
It happened in eight feet of air gone wrong.
The ground didn’t arrive—it corrected.
After impact, sound split into smaller sounds.
Breath returned uneven, like it had been somewhere else first.
I stayed down long enough for time to continue without me.
No alarm. No lesson. Just the world moving on.
Later, I stood without nothing restored—
only parts agreeing to remain usable.
The name didn’t leave at once.
It traveled like something that refuses to admit it was dropped.
Crossed water. Crossed rooms. Crossed years that didn’t ask.
Not a bird.
Just a mark that keeps surviving the body it came from.
Louie Rivers is a poet from Mississippi. His work explores memory, erosion, labor, landscape, and the physical remains of human experience. He is interested in how objects and environments carry emotional and historical residue.