Yoke
by Jean Velasco
This morning
before breakfast, I stepped
on a small bird –
Plump and brittle, like a delicate
flesh-filled bulb,
trapped between my slipper,
the floorboards, and a lumbering
inertia, The rolling
mass collapsed
with a tiny shriek
of cortisol, premature
burgundy flashes
and pneumatised
alien bone.
After daring
to coddle broken softness
the few drips to the bin,
I
shuddered
when she came in
from her shower,
did not squeam
but sat me down, and wiped
the still-warm
muck
from my sole.
Later, twice recovered,
At the table
already laid, I scraped
carelessness from cold toast
and picked
at the c o n g e a l e d
under my fingernails,
s p a t
imaginary
feathers
onto my plate,
but could
not
get rid
of the echo,
as my accomplice
peeled dejection
at our loss,
then offered me the other
boiled egg –
To which I acquiesced
and swallowed, half
ignoring
the tell-tale pulse
of bad dreams
in my blood.
Jean Velasco is a writer, teacher, and translator from Naarm/Melbourne. Her work has appeared in Overland, Kill Your Darlings, Rabbit Poetry, Going Down Swinging, and the Black Inc. anthology, “Growing Up Queer in Australia”. She lives in Madrid, and can be found online @jean_sprout