I wear the sweater she wore near her death,
carefully mended and warm,
and like her I sit in my wheelchair watching birds
chitter at the sill
where I imagine the view
is not concrete and mire. No men
are drilling in the belly of the street
where grackles eat plastic
from the tipsy trash. The sun doesn’t hover,
a balding pearl over bleached-out hairlines
of grass. I scrub
the city away like old window grime
and the view to outside is trees,
trees, trees. I fold back the blinds.
Alexandra Malouf is a disabled poet and multimedia artist. Her work has been featured in Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Poets.org, and Ireland Poetry Review, among others.