Bird
A young woman wears harem pants with a sheer fabric,
red or purple or violet depending on the light, and the gathered folds
hug her thin ankles as she walks by farms on a lavender-green
Seattle evening. She spots her uncle at the gate to his land,
where he raises goats for their colostrum and llamas for affirmation,
and these beasts with their eyelashes as richly curled as centipede legs
look like they’ll either lick her or spit. Her uncle crookedly smiles
at her, hello you, his silver goatee a close shave, and he shares his
package of Peeps. His birds, quails and partridges,
don’t fly much. That’s how he prefers them, earth-bound.
Scrims of spider webs separate uncle and niece from a gaggle of high schoolers
walking by holding Solo cups filled with the brown gloss of heavy-metal
sugar water. Tired, she tastes the sweetness of the air and wants
to lie down, look up, take in the clouds hovering above, find the first stars.
Her uncle’s eyes glimmer in the lowering sun and a woodpecker hammers
at an alder. A lineman (lover, once) on the corner heaves up
a cable and she says he doesn't know what’s broken but he loves being
up there and her uncle smiles her mother’s smile and she misses her
and the man up there. Her uncle says this morning I saw the shadow
of an eagle flying over my garden and it looked like a pterodactyl.
They grow silent. How exhausting flying must be, she thinks.
A neighbor calls won't you light a light to someone they can’t see, it’s
dark now, and they hop over to the voice, why not, where strangers
are gathering. She spots those high schoolers and she overhears
their words, not all vampires can fly and camels have wattles and lay eggs
and other nonsense, and she whispers to her uncle get me out of here and
swanlike she bends to get her bag and without speaking her uncle lifts
her light body and lets it fly. Up she goes, untethered and unable to grab
onto anything, but hopeful that she will float downward and the world
will stand still for her, and let her keep her feet on the ground.