ice block

And he is in love with the crows, the crows that sound like nails on tough nylon. Outside his window they are not stiffened by the cold, their muscles do not clench like the knots in his shoulders. Knots are all he has to show for every hour hunched over that desk. That desk by the window.

He does push-ups sometimes in his cell of a room, just enough space between the bed and the wall for a body charged with thick coffee and mango juice. The heater whines clouds of steam. He pretends that he is in the tropics.

But he is here among the bricks, the hardwood floors, the windows that will never quite close. He is in his little world of walls, of books stacked in overlapping rows, of airplanes cutting lines into a perfectly square patch of sky.

He cannot join the crows on the porch this winter. Icicles line the overhang, daring him to touch. He is to use the front entrance until the ice melts, the landlord says. This world is rigid--he is not allowed to slip.