Homes

The group of trees behind our house that I called a forest burned down when I was 12. I never told anyone that Ben and I started the fire with a magnifying glass and a pile of yellow weeds, sacrificing worms and ants to our ideas of god and our parents; and that earlier that day we found an old dog kennel in my garage that we filled with red and tan bird seed and then later locked. We sank it halfway down into the creek and watched the three black shining birds contort their bodies and flap their wings for as long as they could in the few inches between the water and the top of the cage; which is when I touched one with my finger because I needed to. We then let them go to fly back to their homes where they would be safe from whatever it was.