tell me if this is all true

Notes to a History of Bird Keeping 
 

Alone in the attic, she could hear his pigeons moaning in the eaves. Their dirty feathers drifting along the ledge.

 * 

His presentation of the booklet, with its fragile map and array of folded lists, instilled in her a sense of stewardship. The dried violets crumbling from its endless white pages.

 * 

She began to notice inconsistencies in the book’s diagrams. Each feather was still displayed in its proper season. In every bone, a small memento.

 *

Thus the pursuit of anatomy revealed itself as a topography of his imagination. Its mountainous vistas and expansive polar region.

 *

Now the book as field guide. As hieroglyphic inscription. 

* 

Within the narrative, a pigeon warbling to the lost Mussorgsky suite. Its ostentatious throat and colorless eyes.

 *

It was then she considered the author of the ornithological treatise. His pale hands and perfectly groomed fingernails.

 * 

Her name inscribed in the work’s lengthy index. Only when she turned the page would the violets come into bloom.

Kristina Marie Darling