Illegal Exotic Animal.

A poem.

After battling alcoholism and drug addiction for decades
he died of the flu — sober.
He had gotten a fever that went
up and up and up. He was survived by his parrot,
who was older than he was.

The parrot was an illegal animal in a red cage.
He sang ambulance noises. The parrot had been a gift
from his mother. He had never mourned her death.
He said it all the time.

“I was working on my marriage
then I had to get a new job when we got divorced,” he said.
“There was never
time to grieve.
There was never
time to be sad.”

He imagined that he needed
a large amount of time to be sad. A revelation.
Some kind of realization. His mother would appear in a cloud
and say something profound.
The answer was in a drug, maybe. Some right
combination of zapping and pulling his brain.

He didn’t have time to be sad.
He had to work. Everyone had to work, right?
That was not an option. He had no time to be sad
because he had to do this and that and
the other thing.

What would happen to the bird?
The animal was not a legal pet.
But now, he was too old to be free.
Rehabilitated.
Too old to be rehabilitated.

Too old to…be anything more than what he was.
Wasted.

Would he be remembered for that?
For his exotic animal
the bird that made ambulance sounds?
That was cruelly kept
in an apartment full of
dirty carpeting and cigarette smoke?

His mother had gotten that bird as a gift.
Where would it go now?
To a sanctuary, to be cared for,
to live with its own kind,
to feel trees and wind instead of smoke?

To have time
time to grieve?

It sounded nice. It sounded nice.

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