CW: Animal death.
I’ve often worked in natural history collections where it was my job to convert roadkill into museum specimens. So everyone who knew me (my sister, romantic partner, friends) would enthusiastically text me about dead animals they found! I wrote this poem in 2021 when I considered that even after someone breaks up with me, they’ll probably see dead things and remember me from time to time.
I was an invocation—
spoken over
scatter-shot owl
pellets, fragments of bone;
I know you
must see me in the dead
fawn half-eaten,
scraped raw
by catamounts.
my name etched in shrew
jaws, small mammal skulls
found
toothless;
a dove’s
full-chested keel
marooned
at the crosswalk.
I know you remember
the deftness of my
fingers
wire and wet,
threading life
into cotton-heart
birds,
hands reinventing
the cinch
mouth
of weasels.
in every dead thing now,
you must remember
my love
of such gifts
once-given.
