Dead bird

I am walking down the hallway

from the front room

where the computer is

past the living room

where Charlie Brooker is

(being clever

about the week's news)

or it might be Jimmy Carr

(I can't see him, only hear)

and someone who sounds a bit like Lauren Laverne

or who might be any one

of a number of smart

sassy

women

and in the middle of the hallway

(which is tiled with its original 1896 tiles, some of which are broken)

there are feathers

I am going to the kitchen

(from the front room, past the living room)

to get a new pack of cigarettes

having smoked the last one of the last pack

while trying to make myself on a photo

look like me

or the me I think I look like

when I see the feathers

There's an almost-intact wing

all of a piece

perfectly

beautiful

tiny fluffy down-like whispers of feathers

scattered

(some of which are stuck to the floor

but I don't know this

until I try to

pick

them up)

I think oh wow how beautiful

And then what I do

is

find a piece of white card

(which I have to rip off the back

of a document I was given years ago and is called

Engaging Fathers in their Children's Learning)

and

with it

I scoop up

the almost-intact wing

and

the tiny fluffy down-like whispers of feathers

I take the piece of white card

with the wing and its whispers

through the kitchen

I put it on the table

I spray it

I spray it with permanent repositional adhesive

(the point of

permanent repositional adhesive

being that it sticks things to other things

and lets you move them around a bit until they make a pleasing arrangement

and then you can just leave

the whole thing

alone

and it will stay there)

The permanent repositional adhesive

has an unexpected side effect. It

coats the feathers,

covers them

enfolds them

keeps them safe

It keeps them so safe

(in their dead beauty)

that I go back

I go back to the hallway where the rest of them are

and I scoop them up, too

on a piece of paper that came in the post

and says that from 11 APR 11 the amount of benefit I receive will change

and I spray them

as well