He stood in the middle of the road in front of me
The broken body of his love
in a pile of black and white feathers
on the gravel side
As bold as a magpie always is,
Letting me choose if he should live or die
in his corvid grief
I was struck once again
at the many faces of grief
The big man that stood in my office
filling the space behind his dark sunglasses with tears
the quivering hairs on his mustache betraying him
The mother with birdlike bones
that I hugged too hard, forgetting how raw a body feels
with a soul stripped bare
The deep vat of silence that we dip into
Jars of ashes left in cupboards
Cold bodies left stiff in morgues,
as if to pretend that death can somehow be controlled
And so I aimed my wheels to pass over him
Spoke to him in the space of my car as if he could hear me
that it was not my place to choose for him
between life or death
and over I went
After the wind had stopped ruffling his iridescent feathers
and I was able to catch my breath once more
Away he flew
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