There’s a hummingbird trapped in the garage.
You can see its wings and tiny fragile heart
beating as blood leaks out from between your
sister’s thighs. You think of it scratching against
the cement ceiling as she slides off the barstool,
holding her pregnant tummy. You blink faster than
the bird as she collapses. There’s red creeping
across the floor – thick fertile life giving – and
you think it’s going to stain the tile like the time
you dropped the jar of tomato sauce last winter.
She screams and sobs and her bare feet slip
against the slicked floor as the hummingbird
breathes panicked gulps of still air and you look
to your mother, who is shell-shocked frozen, to
tell her to save the bird. It’s just so young
and there were so many complications that led
to its caging, it’s no one’s fault, please it still has
a chance, but only if you can save the baby
locked against the garage door. The tomato
sauce inches toward your toes and you
remember how the glass broke loud and shrill –
all at once, like a hummingbird crying for
the first time – and the dead silence following.
You try to back away and apologize but your
sister is screaming for God to forgive her – even
though it isn’t her fault that the unborn baby
got trapped in the garage in the first place –
and your mother is begging you to calm down
and you think, tell that to the hummingbird
having a miscarriage on your kitchen floor.