Wunderkammer

Originally published in Follow the Buffalo 2011 anthology

Wunderkammer

I

I found a black-capped chickadee on the sidewalk, still, maybe struck down in flight, and I took it because I collect skulls, place them on a shelf for display. There seems such meaning in the curves and hollows, the processes and foramina. Bone isn’t like flesh–it lasts. You can handle it, admire it without breaking the taboo of decay.

II

She calls herself hollow and raps on her ribs to produce the wooden sound of a struck cabinet. Like the Dali sketch of a figure with drawers emerging from along the length of the body, the parallel razor blade slashes on her legs, her arms, her stomach, above her breasts mark the shelves. She found something dead and put it inside her chest, hid it away in a dry place to keep it safe alongside the flesh of past wrongs, grudges. Those kinds of things have a way of growing through rotting.

III

I found a deer skull in the forest, holes where eyes once saw brunette leaves spread across the ground. Its hollows of bone held more life than I ever saw in her tense eyes– splintering shelves holding too much weight.