Goodbye, Lemon-Feathered Fascinator

She’s gorgeous what is she? and that’s enough for love. Some brand of cockatiel. The city pound wagered a $15 hope I wouldn’t bring her back when the shine wore off. No, not for the secrets of touching the sun.

It’s the fragile things that last us longest. Kuu, dove bones of silk firmament, outlived a top-rated water kettle and three times its warranty. She was our goddess of the moon, which is to say, Kuu, beneath nape and wings dyed yellow #5, was cooler than a night-walk home and brighter than a wish on goosebumps on eggshells for a guiding light to make us back safe.

For a moment, she was a fraction of nothing to somebody. A broker, a renter. A parade release, no more heart & mind than a helium balloon. Could have been a sick fashionista’s fascinator flourish. Dyed to match bridesmaids or a fly to trick fish. But within my free-flight aviary, a year gone and gathering up the molt of their chemical dip, she became our ambassador for reimagining life from cruelty.

Kuu was the moon clipped from the orbit of a collapsing master. Kuu was the sound she made from her watchtower. Kuu… she’d say for Careful there, and Kuu… she’d say for More. Like a clock bird on the shoulder of a gentle hour, she’d say Kuu… Kuu… and bowed with the sensitive blink that’s a peace dove’s code for kindness.

It’s not lost on us that to preserve her freedom was to pull her off her flight path. Some will fall from the sky anyway, exhausted and useless against cat jaws. We’d built enough space for momentum, as if to spite the springing haunches of daylight coyotes. And once, then twice, with the door quietly opening itself behind my coop cleaning, Kuu took a stroll into that greater den of danger. Hawk-eyes and who-knows. The city skyline from our wild interface. The absolute freedom of choosing any habitat without offering up a final Kuu of connotation. She scuttled the dust, flew up to a branch, and with her door still open, returned with scarcely an ask. What did she know about instinct and home that I have never managed to glean or trust?

With every piercing yellow feather ejected from the palest pink crepe one can imagine of skin, I created an ornament and gave it to my mom. A permanence of Kuu’s temporary ambassadorship. On a foam form I glued her tail for a tail and her wings for wings. The bead glass eyes never adjusted for the purity, depth, and beyond-human language, beyond-human comprehension, that we seek to simultaneously understand, dive into, and osmose from our animal companionship. We know the impossibility and respect our parameters. Still, we want to swallow it whole to light us up with an innocence we intuit we were meant to carry like a torch until the end.

But we do let it go. On their terms and with the ultimate heartbreak, with the wailing punch of grief. People will arrive at us, tell us we gave them a good life and did the best we could. How can we believe anything of the sort, now with the wind hitting us one foot harder? A chip in the glass dome that was saving us from a natural force we’ll someday have to face. Death is a body now. If there’s poetry in its pile at my feet, go ahead find it. Thank you, I love you, go find it. Bring it back to me like a homing instinct with a shoebox full of moon. If you can catch that, I’ll believe anything of the sort. I’ll trade you for the secrets of touching the sun.