The same gray

At an estate sale, I saw those old birdcages shaped like Victorian mansions. They're in all the attics these days, dusty, the same gray of Spanish Moss. A daughter was selling them, forty-eight herself, labeling everything "antique." She had inherited the whole lot from her mother, a woman called Rose. You would have to name a bird Rose to live there, something small, despite the architecture. In the kitchen, while your stove burned with coals, the bird, maybe a finch, would leap from wall to wall, testing her limits. Tiny clinks would fill the house--that flash of beating feathers. "Rose," you might say, "use your beak."