I was always lifting him from the shelf, his flame-coloured feathers unexpectedly cool and solid in my child hands. I could have sworn he crowed at me each morning, just before I woke in my grandmother's house that always smelled of furniture polish and tea. I recall how I asked him in a whisper when my mother would be home from the sanatorium (how quiet she had seemed, how translucent). By then he had absorbed the warmth of my palms. I held him to my ear. I'm sure he answered, "soon."

Some nights I enter the houses of men who are sleeping, hoping someone will tell me it's not long now. I breathe with them. Sometimes I cluck at their windows.