_:n3abe1b029c064e63bac20b367947d627xb0
<http://schema.org/description>
"<p>Summers spent practicing in the apartment<br />stairwell: hand on the bannister, one foot after<br />another. Did I ever tell you I couldn’t walk</p><p>until I was three and then sort of dragged<br />myself up and downstairs until I was seven<br />or eight? That burgundy carpet.</p><p>I’d stop to breathe and look out the window,<br />over brick tenements, toward the Capitol<br />building. Oak leaves so full of late summer</p><p>sun even I thought, “Obscene” and stood stunned<br />for a moment. My God. The urge to rest like the birds<br />on the phone wires, chatting like barristers</p><p>at the end of the day. Myself the useless<br />Ambassador from the third floor. I was the last one<br />up so the door was left open. I can still see it gaping</p><p>from two stories down. Sometimes music played.<br />Sometimes I’d smell supper. Neighbors stopped<br />to say hello. Achingly beautiful how the sky</p><p>looked as I stood after they left. Nicer somehow<br />in the middle. All the trees tucking blackbirds<br />into their darkness. It really did take this long.</p>"
<https://poets.org/poem/achingly-beautiful-how-sky-blooms-umber-end-day-through-canopy>