We walked around like silly, soft birds that evening,
dressed in peacock clothes, purples and bright blues
as if the world were made of light and champagne
and we could suck the whole thing whole, like an
oyster or an egg. All yolk and mucus, like the jellyfish
on the beach. That summer after chemo, I wanted
to find birds. We bought tickets to the aviary auction
and spent the evening talking to the birds, the huge
kingfisher, lonely sad-billed bird with no one in his cage
to look at, the large Steller’s eagles, angry at the wiring
above their cages, all beaks and claws, perched like sentries,
eyes askew, slanted in disdain as we stared into the glass,
the small African penguins strutting along the fake rocks
in their habitat area, bodies bobbing like buoys. You held
the brochure of items for auction. I tried to find all
the birds of prey or the ones with feathers like silk.
The food was terrible. Catered out of some place that
wanted all fruit to taste like paper. We drank stale wine,
walked around the rows of tables and stalls with art for sale.
I do not even like blue jays really. They are loud birds
with banal colors and rude caws that sound like strange
car alarms. But it did not matter. I had seen the blues
and oranges, the blue jay birds, the circle of white flowers
that still seemed to be dripping wet paint off the canvas.
The artist tried to explain her painting methods, how she
chose the brushes, the colors after months of studying
the bird collections housed at the Carnegie Natural History
Museum. There are thousands of species all hidden beyond
the displays she said. She spent months sketching bird claws,
bird legs, bird bodies. It’s like a secret world of color she gushed.
You were polite. Asked questions about her techniques,
the choice of birds, why the whole painting seemed off center.
She told you about the preservation processes for the birds.
The feeling of sheer surprise at each new set of birds she got
to touch, draw, paint. We placed our bid for the blue jay
painting. The rest of the night, I thought about the dead birds
in the drawers of the museum, hundreds of bodies, lying flat
in paper, lifeless and limp, draped inside drawers, stillborn.