The Wild Parrots of Hollywood

He cried after she held him. (He had told her this wasn’t his first time.) Back then the window had been filled with parrots in the palm trees. They scrawed and heeched And k-k-ee’d. She had picked him up and held him and they both looked out, eyes wide, as he called back to them- Kee-kee! Haaaw! Schsch!Schsch! All this he did not say to her now. The parrots were gone, And she was gone. But she tightened around him. The sound he heard, years away and apart, was the same. And now what she knew- Green and yellow flashes and the many, straining, beating hearts.