Birding Through the Aftermath

By Katelyn Sweeney

I want to talk about the body

& how it persists

His mouth               a wound that won't heal            spreads

across the nation             a kind of infection

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The day too bright to bear witness

My neck craned toward sky

What taxonomy of grief includes

this?                    That brown flutter between dead

branches          finch? Maybe

he says              some part of me listening

despite myself

Hands in pockets to hide their tremor              the way

history lodges itself in joints                 makes them ache

When they say America            I think instead

of wind in my hair             harsh

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Horizon         a medical term for the distance

between what we know             & what kills us

I try to believe in the robin's song                  a small

testament to continuing

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This body    of evidence             against me

this body     of water                   drowning

This existence                               a bruise       darkening

for so long               but what color

will we become                 tomorrow? when the wound

finally opens?

Look— there           in the tree                soft white chest

expanding              deflating

Like lungs     giving their final breath

Eyes    black vessels   holding nothing closed

Its beak       barely open            the way my grandfather's was

after they removed the tube

It is a song sparrow         I record in my notebook

the way doctors record symptoms

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What song is left               when the throat

has been cut?

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BREAK—

About the Author

Katelyn Sweeney is a sixth-grade English teacher and emerging writer in San Francisco. Her writing explores the body's capacity for both witness and tenderness, finding the sacred within ordinary and difficult moments. Her work has appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine and EcoTheo Collective.