Taxidermied Vultures
by Megan Brooke
Photo by Abhishek Singh on Unsplash
I met up with a friend,
and they asked me how I'd been,
I told 'em I was a taxidermied vulture.
They clearly didn't understand,
but I expected so.
"Explain to me," they said.
So, I did.
You know that feeling you get,
every now and then,
when you reflect upon your life
and suspect there was something
you missed, and never quite found?
But you don't know what it was,
what it looked like,
what it smelt, felt or tasted like.
Yet, you could hear it
at night right before you went to bed
when it was pitch black,
everything steady,
everything still,
everything in its place,
your mind stopped thinking,
you feel empty,
only a vessel,
then you hear a sound
like a bird taking flight off of a window seal,
and you suddenly feel as if reality has ceased
and you're floating above the trees
with a breeze beneath your wings.
It's over the moment you realize,
all gone in a flash,
when you have the answers to the universe
right there within your grasp.
I noticed it in their deadened eyes,
that they are trapped within this cycle
of torment and beauty,
when I went to the museum the other day
and saw the taxidermied vultures
staring at me from behind the glass.