Her hair rested on her back in a silk shift
as she balanced on the arm of the recliner.
She sat on her perch. Her dress wrinkled with time.
The radio was always on nowadays-
the names played, but they’d turned into
the hum of a thousand worker bees.
The faint spring breeze skidded in and out of the open window
and rippled the yellow ribbon,
tied in a careful bow around the tree in the front yard.
His dog tag swung in the breeze from the curtain rod.
The light caught it and released it over and over
like a trapped swordfish.
A crow flew in the open window and hopped on the sill-
a three-dimensional, feathered
oil spill in the living room.
The sunlight split its blackness
into a display of emeralds and amethysts.
The crow set its astute eye on the glinting dog tag,
took the thing in its beak,
and glided out the window with a flourish.
She watched it leave.
She went to the kitchen drawer,
withdrew a pair of scissors,
and went outside.
The yellow ribbon, now severed in two,
fell to the grass with a flutter.