A couple of birds
tried building their nest in our mailbox,
depositing small twigs and dried leaves
like breadcrumbs
calling them home.
Before we got smart enough
to close the lid
on these simple hopes,
we must’ve unloaded them
three or four times.
We suspected what it was
before we knew,
before I walked down the steps of our home
and found them,
flying like fugitives
from the metal nook.
I prayed I wouldn’t find
any eggs in there,
joking afterwards that we’d have had
to forfeit our claim to postal services
if I’d come face to face with a full crib.
Heaven forbid
I evict a whole family
so we can keep getting our
newspaper ads, or credit card offers,
or the many “important notices”
insisting I bundle my internet
with a phone and TV subscription.
Striking how two little wrens
(or sparrows, maybe)
find more sympathy from me
than thousands and thousands of human beings
find from the nation
they hoped to call home.
Asking for such little nooks
as we’ll give them—
building whole lives,
raising children
out of things they’ve picked up:
things that
none of us wanted.
Their dreams unloaded
with less dignity
than crinkled leaves
so we can keep receiving
the unnecessaries of life—
that wind up, finally,
in our refuse.
–
Jessica Covil is a third-year Ph.D. student in English at Duke, where she is also pursuing certificates in African & African American Studies and Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies. Some of her poetry is research-related, fusing scholarship and creative writing. More broadly, her poems explore family, sisterhood, trauma, hope, sex, and politics. Some of these have recently appeared online at SWWIM Every Day and Rise Up Review.