She kept her rooms above the weather Curtains drawn against the hour All that beauty held in leather All that hunger taught to lower Invitations died unopened Names went pale inside her phone She let the city spend its glitter On the others, left alone But I saw the windows burning High above the avenue Saw the talon under satin Saw the sky remember who She did not come back softened She came back clean With a little silver line Where the world had been When she strikes, she strikes like a falcon Straight from the glove to the throat of the sun All white wing, black eye, cold calculation The whole room falls before it knows to run She cuts through the glass of the evening Leaves every bright thing trembling where it stands One clean pass and the air is altered One clean pass and the blood leaves their hands Down, down, down from the high dark Down, down, down with a gold arc Down, down, down and the world marks Where she was They said she had become a rumor Some rare illness of the light A woman made of sealed decisions Moving only out of sight But isolation made her finer It drew the waste out of the blade All the soft excess of living Filed away, reduced, remade Now she enters like an incision Through the velvet social skin Every smile around her opens Every old debt rushes in She did not come back pleading She came back honed With a scalpel in her silence And the room overthrown When she strikes, she strikes like a falcon Straight from the glove to the throat of the sun All white wing, black eye, cold calculation The whole room falls before it knows to run She cuts through the glass of the evening Leaves every bright thing trembling where it stands One clean pass and the air is altered One clean pass and the blood leaves their hands I have seen men dress their longing As philosophy and wine I have seen women make a chapel Of surviving being kind She made exile into grammar She made absence into law Then descended through the chandeliers With winter in her jaw No rage wasted in the gesture No speech thrown to the crowd Just the terrible exactness Of a wing leaving the cloud There are rooms that think they own you There are names that think they call There are hands that reach for beauty Just to prove that it can fall Then the latch lifts Then the glove turns Then the hush splits Then the sky learns When she strikes, she strikes like a falcon Straight from the glove to the throat of the sun All white wing, black eye, cold calculation The whole room falls before it knows to run She cuts through the glass of the evening Leaves every bright thing trembling where it stands One clean pass and the air is altered One clean pass and the blood leaves their hands Down, down, down from the high dark Down, down, down with a gold arc Down, down, down and the world marks Where she was She goes back up above the weather Curtains drawn against applause The city keeps the wound she gave it Like a jewel beneath the gauze And I keep looking at the rafters Where the light has been undone Waiting for the room to darken Waiting for the falcon Waiting for the falcon Waiting for the one
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