In the afternoon I brought home two
Silently still like solemn corpses
Awaiting some form of doom

I waved my hand and they roared like engines
Bouncing like super balls
Their powerful talons closing in tension

Crystal was her name and she was fair
Small and quiet, a waiting shadow
White like a snowball against the sun’s glare

I once told my grandmother her life wouldn’t end
I never understood why something so small
Could cause me such grief as losing a friend

We put her in a box laid up on a shelf
To this day I believe she may still live on
Whenever I stop to think to myself

Angel was next and boy what a character
I’d call him Ange as it sounded more masculine
He lived twice as long as the store clerk could figure

Like a grumpy old man he perched on his hut
Sneering at crows, mocking the leaves
Leaning on his cane behind bars he would strut

And then came young Jule as bright as her name
She didn’t move much but had plenty to say
Her fate in the end was exactly the same

When I was a child I used to pretend
They could rip through the iron bars
Though they could barely size up to my hand

After Jule came Emerald, a paranoid one
She hated water. She hated Ange.
How she rivaled the humming birds with her enthusiasm

Poor Jade wasn’t around long
One day he stopped eating
And starved in mid-song

To this day I still think that it was my fault.

And now, green beauty, it is time to die
I’ve lived long enough to notice the signs
As I sit in the shower I wonder
Do you even like me?
Did I give you the life you had wanted?
My only regret is you’re dying alone
With not even the song birds to sing you to rest
The feathers keep falling
It snows in my room.

One day a man asked me
Why keep them in a cage?
I smiled and replied it’s either that or Australia.