What am I supposed to tell the children when they bring their deformed beasts to me?
I teach them the word menagerie as they clear the project table and sweep up cuttings from the kitchen floor.
We gather without you for another slow parade of meticulously made animals, and Iām embarrassed to mistake their swans for butterflies.
The sky aligns edge to edge, a yellow sheet of cellophane, the afternoon cut and creased and folded like fractal creature: a crane inside a crane inside a crane.