Pat Foran
In a Nest of Kindly Arms
In a nest of kindly arms, your trembling heart tells me you love me. You’ll hear it in her song, your heart tells me. Your song says you’ve never known how to sing it, that you hate the sound of your voice. Especially the way it sounds when you sing your song. To you, it sounds like people walking away, your heart tells me. To you, it sounds like not being loved.
In a nest of kindly arms, my restless choke hold of a heart tells you I love you. You’ll feel it in his kiss, my heart tells you. My kiss tells you I can misread kindness for love. That I don’t articulate my thoughts very well. That I don’t speak clearly. That my nights can be the nullifying kind, like an Ibis you send to yourself COD. Or a heart transplant you talk and talk and talk about but never schedule, and you and your Ibis catch a bus to Reno instead.
In a nest of kindly arms, you work on listening to your singing, on feeling better about your voice. I sound Ok I sound Ok I sound Ok, you say and say and say, until you think you might believe it and fall asleep. In the nest, you dream about a singing heart, a heart that might be breaking, but at least it’s out there, this heart, out there singing. Singing and feeling. So soothing, this singing, you think. So gentle, this breaking. If this singing heart is actually breaking. Either way, it’s Ok, your trembling heart tells you in your dream. It’s Ok.
In a nest of kindly arms, I work on my elocution skills — sentence stress and intonation, in particular. I love YOU, I say. I-I-I love you, I say. I LOVE you, I say. I WON’T walk away, I say. I WON’T, I say. Not bad, my restless choke hold of a heart tells me. Listen and absorb. I’ll take it from the top: “I love YOU …”
In a nest of kindly arms, our hearts cheer us on while we do nestwork. I bring big sticks, you bring small ones, to reinforce the structure. We both bring moss and lichen to line the nest. Our hearts bring baked ranch zucchini strips and cucumber wasabi martinis. Sensing a party, people gather below.
Kiss me, you say to me.
Sing me your song, I say to you.
Tell me you love me, you say.
I won’t walk away, I say.
This could work, your heart says.
It could, yes, my heart says.
The nest extends its kindly arms, one hand gently reaching for my heart, the other reaching for yours. Gently, the nest holds our hearts, holds them and kisses them.
As you sing your song, night falls. The crowd leaves. A Greyhound bus arrives, an Ibis with a ticket in his bill ready to board.
It’s Ok, the nest says to us, restless and trembling, and to our hearts, possibly breaking. It’s Ok.
Pat Foran lives in a nest in a hemlock tree that isn’t anywhere near Reno. His work has appeared in various places, including Tiny Molecules, JAKE the Anti-Literary Magazine and Best Small Fictions 2023. Find him at neutralspaces.co/patforan/ and on Twitter at @pdforan.
