i fold over, and over once more.

two women in three days        
        cried on the green bench in the park
                where i found a dollar
                folded into a boat.
 
i thought it was the crying bench and cried
        on the crying bench
                when it became available.
                               
                                i cried
by thinking of all the people
        who’ve never broken a shop window, not the baker’s
        window, the bead-seller’s,
                who sells beads for purposes
                i find hard to list: necklaces,
                        the hanging of strings of beads
        in doorways, the owning of beads
                                just in case.
 
breaking a shop window with a piece of shale
the size of my heart, a piece of shale
                on which i’ve drawn my heart, not my actual heart
                        but my feelings of my heart,
                                since i’ve never seen my heart,
        would set something free.
 
i don’t know what that something is
                but it would be free.
 
and my heart would have survived its travels
        through glass, its jagged voyage
        through my reflection.
 
you see now why i cried: none of this is real.
until i can answer yes to the cop who asks, is this your heart
                among the ruins of your reflection?
                   i won’t be a man, despite what my anatomy
                insists.
 
it insists
        that i overcome a sense of resistance when i move,
        that i move
as long as i am able to move, and when i am unable
                to move, that i stop.
 
it would be free and look like a bird, an actual bird
        or a dollar folded into a bird, a dollar bird
                        in a dollar boat.
 
which is to say
                i believe origami arrives
                        when we need it most.
 
i can’t prove this but i can’t prove
                you’re a good person though i suspect
        you’re a good person.
 
you who opened the door.
 
you who tipped your hat.
 
you who ran into the fire and carried
        the fire safely out.

a history of origami
bill hicok

italics mine.