Time Lapse

In a time lapse, nothing happens smoothly. / Red horns quake as they splinter / from limbs on the bottlebrush.

“Time Lapse”

A hummingbird is pulled like a bull
toward the loudest reds,
lands on the inmost branch to preen

where only I with window view can see
the arching back of her green torso.
I think of the sentence

the boy (man?) said to me
while I lowered myself
to a frameless, twin-sized mattress:

Your neck looks so breakable.

In a time lapse, nothing happens smoothly.
Red horns quake as they splinter
from limbs on the bottlebrush. It was

never the same after that, dancing,
walking around the cemetery I liked
to visit when the weather was good,

buying groceries after sundown.
And what did I say to him,
did I say, Thank you?