The Abandonment of the Oak Burrow

I flipped over the electric bill, and
With a trembling wing, made a list of the things that
I could still call mine.
I had barely gotten to my ankles,
When the soft rustle of her feathers
Brushed the jagged oak doorframe.
We had hollowed it out together for the winter.
I didn’t look up. I blamed it on the harsh light,
Filtering in over her shoulder.
She dropped another tearful tissue near the pile
Amassing in the corner of our room.
They were like a funeral procession to the wastebasket.
I gazed and imagined that she did as well
at the mouse-tail-trophy above our bed.
The one we hunted on our first date.

She selected my favorite book from the shelf –
A violet one without a title.
She laid it out across the sunny, beaming tyranny
Of the afternoon lawn.
I began to ask her to take good care of it,
But she was already shoving the book hastily
Into her moleskin bag.
Instead, I watched a dangling leaf shiver, shake,
and tear itself from its branch.
I turned around and, hunching over my chestnut desk,
Scrawled a slow, wavering black line
Through the first item on my list.