Abbie Kiefer

I’ve Learned to Accept

the warmed blanket I’m offered as I wait my turn. 
I used to always say no. New England austerity. Aversion

to fuss. I’d wear it only briefly & I’ve come to understand cold 
isn’t the uneasiest portion. Though I’m also unlearning burden 

as virtue. So I cloak the blanket over the gown that wraps 
a sure slash above my left breast. When I’m told to rest 

my arm on the imaging machine, I cradle it as I might have 
the shoulders of a girlhood friend had I felt a greater kinship then

with my own good limbs. During the biopsy — & I’m fine 
now, for now everything is fine — I soften into the nature

sounds. Bird chatter. The nurse says A group of quail is called
a drift & warns of the pinch. The nurse, bird lover, says It’s a weight

of albatrosses & expect to bruise & a trembling —
that’s finches. A quilt of eiders, plucking feathers to buffer their broods. 

I propose my own: an austerity of sparrows. Nesting in exhaust
vents, roof rafters, the hard hollow of a stoplight

— & staying only for a season.
Each necessary shelter meant to be left.

Back to Issue XI…