Caleb Curtiss
Even the wire-thin filament in our nightlight
was a kind of memorial in those moments,
its sepia glow inching into darkness, an artifact
of the night I first saw him there
in the shadows cast upon our bedroom wall—
watched him raise his wings again and again
as if endeavoring toward flight. Or was he not
a bird after all, but a serpent emergent
from the narrow mouth of a tall urn, some
vessel resembling the body of a swan?
Wings not wings but the semblance of wings
shifting in the backdrop he stood against
as my sister and I slept, and in sleep,
watched his wings batter the air and saw
in their motion the suggestion of flight?
A bird or a god of unknown origins
trapped in the negative feedback loop
of my dead sister's dreams, his eyes
black and summoning, bereft of his earthly
trappings as he wanders the gulf
between us. Row after row of barbed
feathers, each a plate of armor tucked
perfectly into the next: scapulars
and coverts, alulas and tertials, the long
quills at the end, dark organs of his flight.