Radiator (draft 1.5)

Radiator

She crouches on the cold seat
and picks at the milky-green flakes.
Each day, the land expands,
acre by lead acre. It never matches
the maps on the school globe, so she knows
it is a place she’s made
on this hard planet,
this quadruple arch, sometimes too hot
to touch, usually chilly, always with
that bird’s head, beak down, crown pointing
toward the door.

A valve, with the paint
of countless careless landlords
frozen into a beak.
She knows what it is, but she makes it
that creature that carries worlds
on its hard back, a bird that might even
break the pipes and fly. That sad fist
of a girl, making voids into continents
while she pees.