But there are tons of animals
Its wings were orange, marked with black
eye-like ellipses, tiger wings for bog safaris, the texture of a paper lantern
when lit from behind by the sun.
There
they were, the foxes. Three sets of eyes
watching him through a veil of rain.
He
told the spider how secondary school is hard with all the changing
rooms between classes for different subjects, how he gets lost because all
the corridors look the same.
The
next morning the cows were restless in the shed, Daddy hadn’t gotten up for
milking.
A blubbing mess of kittens spills out
before her.
One, two, three, blind kittens sopping
in a puddle.
The walls were crooked
in places. The chickens would have to
mind the draft.
When
he was big he was going to make a house for the birds out of wood, so the robin
that lived in the yard, that Granny said was Granddad, who had died before he
was born, could live there.
‘Goodnight moon, good night owl and
goodnight rabbit,’ he said, to the rabbit from his porridge bowl who was in the
middle of the lawn and had thrown him a blinking wave.
He crawled into the wardrobe
to hide in the dark dark. Under Granny’s
fur coat that hung there for storage he howled to his pillow with all the
anguish of wolves and for once it was the monsters that trembled at Kai.
and of course
and of course
A rook cawed in the tree. Kai stared up at the treetops, rooks,
jackdaws, ravens, corbies along with other birds he didn't recognise were
gathering there together. The branches
of the trees were crowding with them. Their wings rattled and shook the leaves. Their black beady eyes
peered down on him praying.
