brewing diamonds in our tea anneliese rix Elegy for Amber Northrop Icarus’ fatal mistake won’t be yours in the abandon of flight. This back fleshed of woman that has not cracked, not called to man-fashioned wings could not fall to sea of anyone’s accord but hers— if only to rebuild waves around an island of her own name, where music implodes after private wars that tattoo themselves on the body and explode again on Tulagi’s shores. My car whites out the mountain air’s night insistently dropping around you, as if the mountains believed they were taller somehow, and I know they heed less respect than I do to the moment when your large eyes broke open our futures in the berth of their gaze as, in the small sacrament of you cleaning your glasses, I watched you undulate like fog beyond the booth, building, and borders, saw you roll out in slow curves of untouchable inevitability. —But just like that, you were back, pushing the weighty glasses over your eyes, and we drank our coffee, talked, me relieved that we were talking about now. Soon, the city’s long fingers drone their tapping in a rhythm that attaches to your limbs and you move on, speakers caving in overhead while you dance like no one’s around when they are, speakers caving in overhead while you dance like everyone’s watching when they aren’t. Speakers cave in overhead while they follow your storm on the dancefloor. Daylight finds its way to tell us different stories... We read circuits around your home, comfortable because the bikes will circle the block once more, warning us with a ceaseless buzzing whose translation distance won’t allow us to discern; what we do understand, they’ll come, they have their route, routine, a path to ride. They’ll stay in their loops today, and we’ll watch, easing the tension that patterns bring by knowing there are other rides, even though we can’t say it. Today I watched Denver move from rooftops and imagined your progress in the observable order of toy cars, toy people, and trees and lights. I orchestrated the pieces below, letting myself pull strings of disorder into control only visible from fourteen stories. I pulled your car around the streets one last time, led you into the Tavern, sat you down at the Lancer for a drink, but you undulated like fog beyond this skyline, and I came to my desk. You undulate like fog beyond these lines, leading my pen behind as I sit finally ready to draw you into spaces of twin cities, because one of anything should no longer have to be enough.