Chicken

So what were you doing when the Twin Towers collapsed? I was sitting outside the principal's office, eight-and-a-half and waiting for a talking- to. Was sent back to class by a pensive expression. What was I in trouble for? Probably for rejoining some taunt with my fists. Years pass and I receive my fair share of bludgeoning, pressed down in the dirt outside the school, adults sitting on top of me and pinning my limbs as I buck and flail wildly, seeing black. I grow tall. My mother sprouts crow's feet, makes clicking sounds with her talons when she walks. Starts dyeing her long curls brown. We peck at our food. And always the screaming. On TV, a sparrowhawk napalms a flock of meeker birds, while off a ways circle the vultures. Now, in the After Times, I walk down the road, hands in my pockets, hunched like a teenager. I see a flock of sparrows pecking at concrete. I catch a small one and swallow it whole. Its small silver breath mingles with my breath. Its wings crack and splinter under my teeth. I chew slowly, and blood runs down my gullet. I savor its flavor, then spit out the feathers. I learned from my mother to eat our birds, who learned from her mother to eat her birds, who learned from her own mother to always pick her teeth clean of feathers when she ate.

Author's Note

Published in Arboreal Magazine Issue #4, December 2023