I bought red chairs and celebrated that I had not bought them with you.
I christened them over whiskey and wine
with new company
who does not scare my kids.
A baby pigeon thought it was safer on the ground and left its nest.
Baby boy fished it from the pool when it started to drown,
saving it while it struggled to save itself.
We could not save it from the cat that found it overnight.
We found it dead,
pressed against the concrete,
wings tattered and spread like a snow angel,
neck was twisted grotesquely.
That same night I opened my neck to someone new.
You never liked my neck anyway,
just my ass,
always turning me around so you did not have to meet my eyes.
Not sure it is safe to let him at my neck either,
but he takes up less space than you and does not make me feel small.
I dreamed of that bird later maybe just as it was being slaughtered.
I dreamed that it opened its wings and thanked me
and then turned into a cat.
Baby boy woke me to say he was sure
the bird was dead.
He could feel it like he feels other things he fears,
but this
we both knew was true.
The bird had fought for its life right under the red chairs;
the blood told us so.
Pools of bird blood smell gamey when cleaned with water and bleach.
I wrapped my hands around it
like those dead babies
I had held for women who birthed them that way.
Pouring love onto half warm bodies,
shells of babies not there.
Cruel consolation for their devastated parents.
This bird, too, was there but gone.
I flinched
and wrapped its body with a torn paper bag.
Bad omen, I told my mother,
a warning not to bare my neck to this new one.
He cannot be trusted.
Just like an impulsive cat.
The bird came to let me know.