In the story I am the nightingale, and you
are usually the hotplate; though occasionally
you are the subway token, and I am the Queen
of Norway. Once I was copper ore, running
in thin sheets through the gut of a mountain,
and you were the favorite rooster, pecking corn

from the hand of the farmer's wife. Sometimes
the story struggles to hold it all: the runaway
train and the cheetah. The booster rocket and
the handgun. Now I am strung on a rosary.

Now you are ripening on a tree. Years pass,
as if the story had forgotten us. Then a priest
holds the paper to a candleflame; and the nun's
love letters, writ in lemon juice, come to life.