you’ll have shaky hands all your life. I thought
caffeine, a strained tendon from typing
with my wrists
curved back. I thought bad
nerves. Instead, it was the bird—a brown cardinal—I scooped
into my shirt from the middle of the street
whose stunned neck rolled
loosely from side to side. I tried not to rock the bird
too hard in my hem. Seven years
old. I walked slowly the whole
way home. My mother helped me pillow
the bird on tissues in a glass hamster
cage. The next day I returned
from school to find no bird. I believed
my mother when she said she drove it
to a special doctor in the country. A week later she told me
she telephoned to find the cardinal
had healed and flown. But since
I’ve been grown, I’ve tried to imagine the woman
who lives in the woods and makes
the tiniest neck braces for wild cardinals. I’ve raised a book
to my face at night and realized my
fingertips shake. And there’s a current that curves up
my arm like a broken-necked bird
flying straight to the bone.