Page 91

A rescue from the edge becomes a terse lesson that fear of mutilation does not exempt anyone from belonging to the same vulnerable, winged creatureliness.

The poem is tiny, but it cuts quickly from action to identity. Saving her does not produce safety; it only reveals that terror and kinship are bound together. Calling the frightened person a bird too makes fragility feel shared rather than exceptional.

A five-line fragment that pivots from a rescue ('Didn't I take her off the edge / when I thought she was gonna die') to a hard truth about kinship: 'Being afraid of your eyes being / pecked out don't mean that your / not a bird too.' Fear of the predator does not exempt you from the species; vulnerability and belonging are the same condition.