Birds Are Skimming The Window

I tell them this is not a good life choice
even though the birds are sidestepping, glazing their right wing
over the rhododendrons, their left on the glass.

My daughter and I are putting together the skeleton of a sparrow,
carefully we are trying to construct the impossible flight.

Olivia says she wants to die first
please don’t go before me.
We are selfish in this act of loving.
We are selfish in laying down bones.

I want to tell her I am older it is my right.
I will open the window.

The baby is sleeping and my sister’s son died blue.
In the morning paper there are photographs
of children without hands.

I do not wonder
how they eat or bathe
but simply how their mother explains
what is lost will never return

because my daughter wouldn't accept
she would say everything will come back.