A bird has landed on your tongue. This bird is love and like so many times before, love is here to have its way with you. You close your mouth around it because you don’t want anyone to know about this bird. In these dangerous times, this fresh new thing has landed on your tongue. You close your mouth around it. You enjoy the heat coming off its body. You do not say a word to anyone about the bird. Even your mother takes your silence for something more awkward. Meanwhile the bird moves down your tongue, starts to burrow itself deep into your red throat. Your throat, the colour of raw meat and strawberries, reminds you of animal muscle – the legs of a horse, or some dog making strides, going broke for love: an animal looking for another animal. And you give in, of course you do. You imagine the bird at home in your animal throat, that love itself knows its way inside you. But these are dangerous times. You have let a wild thing find its way into you. You have closed yourself around it and let no one know (not even your mother) and there is no telling what will happen the moment you open your mouth, no telling at all. So convince yourself; convince yourself of one thing, the only thing you think will save you – “there is a crack in everything”.

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