What Remains Posed

I unwrapped it slowly. The plastic

had grown brittle, yellowed at the edges.

Inside: my grandmother's owl,

wings folded tight against its body,

eyes still open, still fixed

on the corner of a shelf I'd forgotten.

Dust fell as I lifted it.

Not dust from outside the feathers.

Dust from within them.

Settled in the creases, in the seams,

in all the small dark places where

nothing was supposed to decay.

The eye was clouded now.

Glassy. Staring at a point

that had ceased to exist

the moment she stopped looking at it.

I held it in both hands,

feeling the lightness of it,

the brittleness. Something had been

hollowed out—the flesh, the weight,

the reason anything cares that

a bird was once alive.

I placed it in a box marked "donate"

and didn't look back

because the eye was still open

and I couldn't bear the suggestion

that it was seeing me do it.