It was the year I refused to look at my own reflection.
A bird flew into my brother’s bedroom window before
falling onto the driveway, leaving thin, spidering cracks
in the glass, a gaping wound in its head seeping blood.
A jade ink drop of an eye still wide open, following me.
Our parents cradled the starling gently in their hands,
tended to the gash carefully and put it in an old shoebox
in the garage, waiting for the bird to wake up. When
it never did, they buried the small body in the backyard.
I had never known such gentleness existed in the world.
In my brother’s room at night, underneath the intensity
of the fluorescent lighting, after the sky darkened and fog
dimmed the moon, I looked at myself again for the first
time in the misted, fractured glass. I see the bird’s eyes.