Afraid of the pet-store bird who died.
Her sister retrieves the greensogreen
Corpse.
From her bedroom window perch, she watches her sister bury it,
Her father’s shovel from the hook in the garage packs it in.
She sees for the first time, their backyard is a cemetery.
Bones rest in soft shallow graves, a friendly intersection like
Young girls sharing beds at a sleepover,
Tingeing her suburb with loss.
Then life goes silently off track.
Spent, though surely unknown to her
Making up for it.
Trying to get the birds to forgive her
Not the death so much. The fear
Of them, of the greensogreen, of
Her sister.
Buffy lives in Los Angeles where she writes short stories and poems now that her time marketing films is up. In 2017, she was a two-time nominee for the Pushcart Award.
Beautiful, tender and haunting.