1. Exoskeleton EXOSKELETON
An exoskeleton is a hard protective covering on the outside of an animal’s body. outside
Did you know
that seahorses
have two skeletons:
one on the inside
and one on the outside?
Imagine being able to
wear your skeleton on the outside
like armor,
making sure that predators know
not to come
too close.
bones
Cicadas scream in the trees
and the playground rings with laughter
and tears and promises
to be friends forever
as everyone signs each other’s yearbooks
and school shirts.
But me? I’m hiding behind a gum tree,
face pressed against the
scratchy bark.
Edie’s voice drifts toward me.
“Anyone seen Bones?
I’m going to sign her shirt.”
Her sly giggle
makes my heart fish-flop.
“What are you going to write?”
someone asks.
Edie’s voice
rings out
across the playground clamor.
“I’m going to draw a
picture of a witch,
seeing as she loves playing with
bones so much.”
More laughter
clatters toward me.
I dig my fingers into the bark.
It was Edie who gave me my nickname:
Bones.
She thinks it’s an insult
but I’ve claimed it as my own.
Bones are strong like armor.
Bones can crack but they mend.
Bones remain
when no other part of you does.
purpose
I stay silent behind the tree,
my shadow long and still beside me.
And then a familiar voice,
softer than Edie’s,
says,
“Don’t be mean,
remember her brother…
and then her mum left a few months ago…”
The voices drop to whispers,
which curl into the air.
My mum hasn’t left! I want to yell.
She’s just gone up north to the mines to work as a cleaner for a little while. But I don’t want them to know I’m here.
I want to stay invisible.
I watch a line of ants
trickle steadily
down the tree trunk,
one following the other:
intent,
industrious.
They each have a purpose.
They belong.
blue-sky dreaming
Sun burns fierce
on the back of my neck
as I stop outside the school gates,
watching a lizard skitter-scatter
into a clump of yellow-dry grass.
My face always
tilts down toward the earth,
watching for the secret scurrying
of tiny creatures.
My younger brother Nico’s face was always skyward,
his eyes reflecting the radiance of sunlight,
the softness of clouds,
the endless freedom of space.
He imagined himself as
a bird a superhero a plane a shooting star.
Every night,
under our blanket fort,
he made me read
books about outer space and the sky.
His favorite was
the story of Icarus
(the boy who flew so close to the sun
that his wings melted
and he fell
to his watery death).
Nico was all head-in-the-clouds
and blue-sky dreaming.
But me:
I’m shadows and dirt and autumn leaves.
I crave the cool, earthy
smell of soil,
imagining myself scuttering
along secret passages with the ants,
tunneling deliciously deep with the worms.
I’ve come to know that
if you’re always looking up,
you’ll miss stuff—
a whole other bustling world
right
beneath your feet.
dirt
My fingers are burrowing in
the dirt,
looking for
buried treasures
for my collection,
when I hear a giggle
that scrapes at my skin.
“Still playing in the dirt,
Bones?”
I sit back on my heels
and squint up at Edie, who’s nudging Aiko.
They have matching
sneakers and side braids.
But their faces don’t match.
Edie’s lip is curled.
Aiko is looking at the ground,
a crease in her forehead.
“Found any new
bones lately?”
Edie sneers.
“Gonna cast some witchy spells
with them?”
She waggles her fingers at me.
“Maybe I will,” I say.
“Maybe I’ll resurrect some ghosts
and tell them to come
and HAUNT you.”
I open my eyes wide.
Is that the shadow of a smile on Aiko’s face?
It quickly slips off when Edie glares at her.
“You’re such a weirdo.”
Edie rolls her eyes,
but there’s less certainty
in her voice now.
“When you get to middle school, you’ll have to stop
all this…”
Edie waves her hand at the patch of dirt
in front of me.
“… It’s for
kids.”
I wrinkle my dirt-smudged nose at her as
a familiar feathery fluttering
starts up in my chest.
Tell her we are
kids, Nico whispers,
his breath brushing my cheek.
But I shrug and look at the ground again,
waiting
until their footsteps fall away
toward Aiko’s mum’s car.
photo-flick
I glance up as Aiko’s mum lifts her
hand at the car window.
Bright sparks of memory
photo-flick through me:
Aiko’s mum
flipping pancakes for me and Aiko after school
and walking us to the park.
Brushing my knotty hair
or slipping lunch money into my pocket
when Mum forgot.
I give a small wave back.
matching
Aiko lives
a few suburbs away from school,
where the houses have
fresh paint,
green-trimmed hedges
and soldier-straight mailboxes.
Aiko’s house sparkles
with light.
I know this because once
it was
me who went to her house after school
and played with her dog
and ate her cookies and rice paper rolls.
But then…
I guess
we stopped matching.
Maybe we never really matched
the way Edie and Aiko match.
opposites
Edie and Aiko like:
lip gloss, making friendship bracelets, talking about boys.
I like:
spiders, sketching, collecting bones.
Edie and Aiko wear:
bright clothes and sparkly shoes.
I wear:
black T-shirts with skulls on them and combat boots.
They draw:
unicorns and anime characters.
I draw:
dead things and skeletons.
network
I brush dirt off my knees
and shuffle home.
I live in the opposite direction of Aiko and Edie,
where the fence palings are broken teeth
and the summer breeze
carries the smell of rubbish in the evenings.
“We’ll get outta here one day, baby girl,”
Mum said before she went up north.
“Just wait until I’ve saved up enough—
we can live in a nice house
with a garden and flowers
and all that.”
She stood in the dirty light
filtering through the kitchen window
of Nonna Frankie’s apartment,
with that faraway look in her eye.
But I’d just shrugged.
’Cause I don’t care, not really.
I like Nonna Frankie’s apartment.
I like the way
neighbors say g’day
as they walk past.
The way you can hear
doors slamming
music swirling
kids squealing.
I like the cooking smells drifting from under doors.
There’s not all that much space, but
you are part of a network
in this run-down building,
part of the muscle and bone and arteries
that keep its creaky old heart
thudding along.
too late
I’m halfway home when
I find a treasure to add
to my collection—
the husk of a cicada
clinging to the scribbly bark
of a tree.
I know that Edie and Aiko
would screw up their noses and say,
“Eww,
gross!”
(Which somehow makes me like it more.)
I place it carefully on the palm of my hand,
knowing that the adult cicada
who left this shell behind
will die within a few weeks.
I close my eyes and
listen for its shrill, urgent song.
Before it left its shell behind,
it lived underground
as a nymph
in the cool, soundless dark,
drinking sap from tree roots snaking into the soil.
It was safe and cozy,
dreaming cicada dreams,
curled with its cicada siblings.
But then
it couldn’t fight that urge,
that instinct,
to tunnel its way out
of the safety of its burrow—
up
up
up
into the light above ground.
“Better to stay underground,”
I whisper to the husk,
but
it’s too late now.
nothing special
The scratched-paint door of our apartment
bangs behind me
as I burst into the kitchen.
“Look what I found!”
I hold my hand out to Nonna Frankie,
who’s kneading dough at the kitchen counter.
Nonna Frankie inspects my find
in her slow, considering way.
She’s straight as an arrow,
keen eyed and battle-scarred.
Once she rode a motorbike
and worked in a tattoo parlor.
Now she works at the corner store
but only during school hours.
“Huh,” Nonna Frankie says,
and goes back to kneading,
lean brown arms pushing into the soft dough.
A serpent tattoo slithers down her forearm.
I hold my palm up to the light.
“It’s going in the collection.”
“That collection better not start smelling bad
or it’s all going out to the bin.”
Nonna Frankie says that every time,
but I know she’d never throw my stuff away.
“How was your last day of school?”
Nonna Frankie starts rolling out the dough,
but I know by the angle of her head
that she’s listening.
I shrug. “Nothing special.
Everyone signed each other’s shirts
and cried
and all that stuff.
Dunno what for,
since most of us will be at middle school together
next year.”
Nonna Frankie looks like she’s thinking
about saying something.
But then
she doesn’t.
I look back at my cicada husk,
its hopeful glisten under the light.
worker bee
“Dinner soon,” Nonna Frankie says
before I swing out of the room.
She always used to add,
“We’ll leave some in the fridge
for Mum.”
Before Mum went up north,
she worked late
cleaning offices
after everyone had gone home for the night.
At bedtime
I’d lie awake and imagine her:
a busy worker bee buzzing through
the empty neon-lit offices.
But now
she’s a busy worker bee up north,
preparing meals and cleaning
at a mine site in the outback
where there’s red dust,
white-scorched skies,
and very bad phone reception.
“At least the pay is good,” she’d said.
Mum emails
almost every day.
When we get our own place, we’ll grow daisies and sunflowers and herbs, so that our garden is always full of bees and butterflies. I imagine us
lying on our backs
with the sky above,
blue as the eye
of a bowerbird.
trapped
We moved in with Nonna Frankie two years ago,
when Mum couldn’t afford rent
on our apartment anymore.
Nico and I shared the bed
in the spare room,
while Mum slept on the pull-out couch.
But Mum was a trapped bird in
Nonna Frankie’s apartment,
fluttering from window
to window.
I knew her heart dreamed
of wide sunlit spaces,
stretching out
to the horizon,
and glittering nighttime skies.
A place where she could fly.
collection
I pull my suitcase
from the dusty dark
beneath my bed.
It snaps open
with a secret click.
Inside is my collection of dead stuff:
- a crab claw Nonna Frankie and I found on a beach trip
- some smooth, swirly moon snail shells
- a few dried leaves and flowers (autumn brown and crispy crinkly)
- a handful of birds’ feathers (the startling red from a rosella, the glistening blue black from a crow)
- a mouse spider, found in the community garden (dead but perfectly preserved).
And, finally, my most valuable treasures:
- my animal bones (a tooth, a claw, a rib—dug up from the mud down at the wetlands)
- the spiky ribs of a snake (still attached to the head and backbone, which I found on a mountain walk)
- a pile of rat bones (bleached clean after Nonna Frankie found a dead rat under the stairwell).
weirdo
I suppose you’re wondering why I have
a bunch of dead stuff
in a suitcase under my bed.
You probably think
I’m a weirdo.
(Like Edie does.)
And maybe I am.
Did you know there are heaps of synonyms for
weirdo?
Our fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Hawker,
told us about synonyms.
He said it’s when a word has the same meaning
as another word.
Some synonyms for
weirdo are:
Wacky
Eccentric
mIsfit
fReaky
oDd
Offbeat
I guess I’m all those things.
I collect and draw dead stuff.
I know how to sterilize and clean animal bones
to get the germs off them
(so you don’t get sick after touching them).
Pretty weird,
right?
still matter
The last time Aiko came to my house,
I was laying my animal bones out on the floorboards,
nudging the bones
into the shapes they had once been,
imagining the lives they once had.
I didn’t hear her come into my room—
I only knew she was there
when I heard the sharp intake of breath:
“What are you doing?
Are they… like… actual bones?”
A sick feeling blossomed in my stomach
as I saw Aiko near my bed,
holding her bracelet-making kit.
Her eyes skittered over to
my open suitcase
full of dead stuff,
and then across to my sketchbook—
its pages filled with labeled sketches of
animal skeletons.
“It’s just…
I’m just…”
I wanted to tell her that
dead things still matter,
that they show us
what the animal had once been,
that by looking at their bones we can imagine
where they had lived,
and the things they would be doing
if they were still alive.
It was my way of
honoring
them.
But my mouth didn’t say any of these things.
And I knew by the way Aiko
stepped backward,
her eyebrows drawn down,
that she was now as far away from me
as Neptune is
from Earth.
moon snail
After that day,
I curled away from Aiko
like a moon snail sheltering in its shell,
drifting along the currents
far out in the ocean.
Things between us had already started to change
after Edie came to our school,
the pieces of our friendship
shifting and rearranging.
Edie didn’t want to share Aiko with me.
I didn’t want to share Aiko with Edie.
So mostly
I just walked away.
husk
I gently place the cicada husk
in the suitcase,
which is lined with
sky-blue paper.
It looks cozy in there, Nico says
over my shoulder.
Lying on my stomach,
dirty feet in the air,
I carefully draw the husk
in my sketchbook.
Sun and shadows
flicker in through the window.
movement
I’m tidying up my pencils
when I hear movement outside:
car doors closing,
voices sliding across the
still-hot late-afternoon air.
I peer through my window.
There’s a moving truck parked on the street,
people carrying boxes
back and forth back and forth,
a straggly haired kid in bright clothes
jumping on and off the back of the truck,
someone (the kid’s mum?)
with spiky red hair
cheerfully yelling out orders and directions.
The apartment across from ours
on the ground floor
has been empty for weeks.
I guess we have new neighbors.
Maybe they like birds? Nico whispers,
and his breath is stardust and birds’ feathers.
And planes? And stars? And rockets? I shrug,
nose pressed against the glass,
until the kid spins around—
like they can feel me watching—
and stares straight at me.
I duck down fast,
leaning against the wall,
pretending
I was never there at all.
pineapple
I help Nonna Frankie
put pizza toppings on rolled-out dough.
Olives and mushrooms on mine.
Salami and peppers and mushrooms
for Nonna Frankie.
Nico always picked ham and pineapple.
He said it tasted like holidays and sunshine.
“Huh,” Nonna Frankie would say.
“Pineapple
doesn’t belong on pizza.”
Because that’s what her dad used to say to her.
(Nonna Frankie wasn’t born in Italy,
but she says there’s some stuff
that’s just in your blood.)
Mum would laugh her sudden husky laugh and say,
“Don’t knock it till you try it!”
other side
“It smells so good.”
I peer through the oven door,
watching the cheese melt and bubble
on the pizzas.
Nonna Frankie wipes her hands on a paper towel.
“They’ll be ready soon.”
She hasn’t said it,
but I know this is a special dinner
because it’s my last day of elementary school.
(And also because Mum can’t be here,
even though she rang this morning
to wish me luck.
But the phone cut out
before she could
say goodbye.)
Next year I’ll be at the local middle school:
a school with sun-warmed bricks
and sloping green lawns.
Aiko and I used to walk past it with her dog,
talking about all the stuff we’d do
when we got there.
“I’m going to study dance and drama,”
Aiko would say, staring longingly through
the fence,
like middle school was the place
where her real life would begin.
I was excited about the science labs:
white coats and goggles,
scalpels and microscopes.
Drawing carefully labeled diagrams
with sharp pencils.
But now Aiko’s going with Edie
to the posh school for girls
on the other side of town.
They’ll ride the bus in their blazers and hats,
polished as river stones,
glossy as magazine covers,
and as far away as the moon.
not ever
“We have new neighbors,”
I tell Nonna Frankie
while we eat at the kitchen table,
surrounded by paper and pencil shavings.
Nonna Frankie nods, chews.
“Yep, heard ’em. Just across the hallway.”
I nibble my crust.
“There was a kid.”
Nonna Frankie sips her water.
“Go say hi.
Could be good to hang with someone
over summer.”
I keep chewing.
“Nah. I’m just gonna draw and
go down to the wetlands and stuff.”
I pick up my pencil and
start scribbling on the paper next to my plate.
Nonna Frankie clears her throat.
“Maybe you could take your bike down
to the dirt hills too.
Ride with the other kids.”
That dark fluttering stirs in my chest.
Nonna Frankie knows I’m never
going back there.
Not ever.
dumpster diving
After dinner,
I shuffle outside to the dumpster,
which smells like old socks and overripe bananas.
I lift my arm to chuck the bag of trash in
when…
“Watch it!”
a voice echoes from the dumpster.
I stumble backward.
“Holy humerus!”
A head pops out of the dumpster.
It’s the kid who’s just moved in.
Wide mouth and freckles,
baseball cap pulled down low over straggly hair.
“Holy humerus?”
My bony armor tightens across my chest.
“A humerus is an upper-arm bone.”
The kid loudly chews some gum.
“I know.
I’ve just never heard anyone say that before.
And you almost dumped that on my head!”
I push back my bangs
with one arm.
“What are you doing in there anyway?
Dumpsters are for garbage, not people.”
My voice jolts out of me,
sandpaper rough.
The kid shrugs,
blows a strawberry-colored bubble.
“Dumpster diving.
You’d be amazed what people throw away
that can be reused.
So wasteful.
Watcha got in that bag?”
The kid reaches for the bag and
I step back.
“Just some kitchen scraps,” I mutter.
The kid pulls themself onto the dumpster edge,
legs dangling
in denim cutoffs.
“Well, go on. Chuck it in then.”
I throw the bag into the dumpster.
It lands with a squelchy thud.
The kid stares at me, blowing another gum bubble.
“What’s your name?”
I lift my chin and meet the kid’s eyes.
“Bones.”
The kid smiles. “Cool. I’m Tenny.”
“Oh.” My shoulders loosen a bit.
Tenny kicks their legs against the dumpster,
just staring and chewing gum.
I don’t know what else to say,
so I turn to go.
But Tenny says to my back,
“I found some awesome stuff
in the dumpster across the road.
Stuff I can fix up. Wanna come see?”
I turn around.
A magpie warbles.
A truck rumbles by.
A dog goes arf arf.
I shake my head.
“Nah. Got stuff to do.”
I shove my hands in my pockets
and shuffle away.
chance
After washing up, I take Nico’s old BMX bike,
with its broken bell
and scratched paintwork,
down to the wetlands.
Riding Nico’s bike
makes me remember
his whoops of joy
when he landed a tricky jump,
and the way he’d whoosh past me yelling,
“Look, no hands!”
My own bike sits neglected
in Nonna Frankie’s storage cage.
Nonna Frankie says I need to be back before dark,
joking that otherwise
she’ll send Raze after me.
Raze lives in the apartment above us.
He has scars on his face
and washes car windows on the main street.
“He looks like someone
you wouldn’t want to meet
in a dark alleyway,” Mum said
when she first saw him.
But then we realized
he’s the type of person
who wouldn’t even step on a spider
in his own home.
“He’s a good guy,”
Nonna Frankie often says.
“He’s made mistakes in his past,
like we all have.
It’s what you learn from them
that matters in the end.”
When she says that,
I don’t say what I’m really thinking,
which is that we don’t always get a chance
to learn from our mistakes.
Nico didn’t.
surface
My toes squelch in slippery mud
and slender gums gleam like exposed bone
in the last gold threads of sunlight.
The wetlands
are the best place to be
in summer.
The water is too dirty to swim in,
but the air hums with insect buzzing
and birdsong,
and, best of all,
sometimes I find hidden treasures
in the damp dirt.
For a moment everything inside
feels still and calm
like the surface of the water.
I skim a flat stone,
watch it skitter skip scatter.
The sun is starting to slip below the horizon,
staining the clouds
cotton candy pink.
I guess I’d better get back home
before Nonna Frankie sends out a search party.
As I reach down to pick up
Nico’s bike,
something catches my eye:
It’s sharp and white,
just poking out from the dirt.
Using a stick,
I dig around the exposed tip of
a curved claw.
My heart hops
with anticipation.
I carefully pull the claw out.
But it’s not just a claw:
The claw is attached to a bony foot,
which is attached to a spindly leg.
There is also a frail backbone with ribs,
and the gentle slope
of a tiny skull.
They’re the bones
of a small bird.
My breath catches in my throat.
This is special—
it’s rare to find animal bones already cleaned
by the water.
I can’t wait to add them
to my collection.
I carefully tuck the bird skeleton into my pocket
and wipe my hands on my shorts.
A sharp snapping of twigs
behind a clump of trees
makes me stop still.
Then there’s a softer, stealthy sound,
like someone is there
but trying not to be seen.
My pulse races.
“Who’s there?” I yell,
clenching both fists.
A ganggang calls out
like a rusty gate hinge
and then
someone steps out
from behind the trees.
exposed
My eyes widen.
The someone is in a baseball cap
and cutoff shorts.
“It’s
you!
Did you follow me?”
Tenny shrugs
like it’s no big deal.
“What did you find?”
They eye me curiously,
hands in pockets.
I think about showing them
my new treasure.
But then straightaway
I also think
about Aiko—
the way she looked at me
when she saw my collection
of dead stuff.
My hand drops down
to cover my pocket.
“Nothing.”
My voice comes out
as spiky as a snake’s ribs.
“Gotta go,” I add,
picking Nico’s bike up.
“Oh,” Tenny says.
“I thought we could take our bikes
down there
…” They point
toward the track that leads
to the dirt hills
and the dark fluttery thing
bangs about like a grenade against my chest.
“My nonna said I’ve gotta be home
before dark.”
I jump on the bike and start pedaling
before Tenny can say
another word.
lonely planet
Nonna Frankie comes in as always
to say good night.
She sits heavily on the side of my bed,
puts a hand on my hair.
She smells like flour and oranges.
Moonlight slopes in through
the window.
There’s a twitch at the edges of the thin curtains,
like Nico’s there,
looking up at the basketball-hoop moon.
Nico used to spend ages
peering at the sky through his wonky telescope
(which Mum found at Vinnies).
“Did you know that Neptune is the farthest planet
from the sun?” he once said.
“I want to go there.”
I’d frowned at him
from where I lay reading in bed.
“Why?”
Nico had shrugged, still squinting
through his telescope.
“?’Cause it’s probably lonely,
so far from the sun.”
I’d rolled my eyes.
Only Nico would care about a planet being lonely.
I know he’s standing by the window now,
imagining himself
free floating in space
in his bulky astronaut helmet.
Weightless
serene
bathed in moonlight.
Nonna Frankie looks at the window too,
and I want to ask her if she
knows that Nico is there.
But we both stay quiet.
superman
Nico’s free-falling downward,
arms and legs out straight
like he’s a bird or a plane
down down down
the air rushing past him
down down down
toward the hard, flat ground
and then
I’m sitting bolt upright in bed,
tangled in sweaty sheets.
Mum used to crawl into bed with me
when I woke from one of my dreams.
I had so many of them after Nico died:
Nico falling through space and time;
Nico standing in the blue shadows of my room,
wearing his cardboard bird’s wings,
saying with his gap-toothed smile,
“It was all a dream, silly. I’m still alive!”
Mum would stroke my back while
my breath came out in big rolling waves,
and then she’d curl beside me,
smelling faintly of disinfectant,
still in her work shirt
with the stiff collar.
“I’m here now, baby, go back to sleep.”
In the light of the moon, I’d notice
the square line of her jaw,
her long dark hair on the pillow,
and the way her mouth drooped downward
even as she slept.
breathe life
Now Mum’s up north,
sleeping in shared rooms
with other workers,
the air shifting and sighing
with their mingled breath,
while they dream separate dreams.
Wide awake now,
I sit on the floor,
holding
the hollow bones of my little bird.
My heart bursts
at the tender curl of its toes.
I wonder what would happen
if I could imagine the bones back into
a living, breathing bird.
If I could cover the bones in skin and downy feathers.
If I could softly breathe life back into the tiny lungs.
If I could gently hold the bird in my cupped hand,
and feel the kick start of its heart
as its eyes blinked open.
I’d feed it with a tiny liquid dropper
and watch it grow stronger
and stronger.
Then finally the day would come
when my
bird would push off my hand
and flutter up
toward the sun
without ever looking back.
wish
I kneel and carefully place the
bird bones on my desk.
The air feels electric
with some sort of longing
I can’t even name.
It’s that crackly, pent-up feeling
that comes
before a storm hits.
My gaze lingers on the bones of my bird
like just wishing could make it
real.
No longer dead.
A silver wash of moonlight
softens its hollow spaces.
I close my eyes for a moment,
then whisper
with all the longing in my heart,
“I wish I could talk to you.
I wish you were
alive.”
not alone
I wake again
and something feels
… different.
I sit up, hold my breath, listen.
All I can hear is the clumsy bumping of moths
against the outside light.
But I feel like something—
or someone—
is shifting in the shadows.
My skin prickles.
I turn the lamp on.
Soft yellow light
washes over my room.
And that’s when I see it:
the skeleton
of my little bird
perched on the windowsill.
dreaming
A scream
starts to rush out of me.
I quickly press my hand to my mouth.
The bird tilts its bony skull
to look at me
with empty eye sockets.
“Oh,” it says, in a teeny voice,
sweet as a young child.
“You’re awake.”
My pulse races.
The skeleton bird is talking.
What on Earth…? I grip my bedsheets,
drawing my knees up
to my chest.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.
I just needed to stretch my wings.”
The bird spreads out
its bony limbs.
I stare and stare.
This.
Cannot.
Be.
Happening.
I must be dreaming again.
If I turn out the light
and snuggle back down,
I’ll fall asleep.
And then in the morning
the bones will be back on my desk.
I’ll get up
and Nonna Frankie will pour me a large glass of milk
(because calcium is good for your bones)
and I’ll do some drawing.
I flick the light off,
lie back down,
and close my eyes.
“Take a few big breaths, baby,”
Mum would whisper
if she were here now.
I breathe in.
Out.
In.
Out.
The air in my room
settles into silence.
Until…
There’s a bone-on-bone
crunch and clatter.
“Ouch!” a small voice chirps.
“Wooden desks and bony heads
do not mix.”
Holy humerus. This definitely
does NOT
feel like a dream.
I fumble for the lamp switch.
Light falls over
the bird skeleton
now clawing its way
onto the end of my bed.
summoned
My heartbeat thrums,
loud as a million drums.
“Umm… wha… how…?”
The bird regards me
with a tilted head.
“Have you forgotten
how to speak?”
“No!” I whisper-yell.
Across the hallway
Nonna Frankie coughs.
I breathe in.
Out.
In.
Out.
“I just need to know
what is happening! I mean…
you’re… you’re…
a talking skeleton!”
“So it seems.
I’m sorry to give you a fright.”
The bird hops toward me.
“Let’s start over.
Hi. I’m Bird.
And I am here
because
you summoned me.”
misunderstanding
Did you know
that if you wish aloud for something
in the stealthy shadows of your bedroom,
if you whisper the words
soft as the brush of a moth’s wing,
if you feel the words rush through your blood,
your wish might come true?
No?
I didn’t know that either.
But this is what
must have happened.
“When you said you wished
I was still alive,
it seems
that you wished me into being,”
Bird explains.
“Oh…
umm… I guess I meant
I wished you were alive
the way you
once were,
with feathers and skin and…”
Bird stares at me
with his hollow eye sockets.
“Well, you could have specified that.”
And then I feel bad
for not being more careful.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Bird replies kindly.
“I suppose it was
just a misunderstanding.
All you need to do is help me go back
to what I was.
Before you wished me into
a speaking skeleton.”
I frown.
“Umm… how exactly do I do that?”
Bird clicks his beak.
“Your guess
is as good as mine.”
Silence falls across the room
as we realize
we may have
a teeny
tiny
problem here.
unwish
This is how I find myself
sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor
in the middle of the night
with a talking skeleton,
trying to work out
how to undo my wish.
Bird suggests,
“Maybe you need to say
the
opposite of what you wished for?”
So I close my eyes and whisper,
“I wish you were NOT alive.
I wish you were just bones again.”
I hold my breath,
then open one eye.
Bird is still there,
looking at me.
“You could try saying the wish
backward?”
So I close my eyes and say,
“Alive were you wish I.”
Silence.
Silence.
More silence.
And then…
“Still here,” Bird whispers.
“Oh.”
I open my eyes
and press my lips together.
“Well… how about I light a candle?” I suggest.
“I’ve seen that in movies
when people want to do magic.”
Bird bobs his head up and down.
“Yes! Good idea.”
I creep out to the kitchen
to find matches
and a tea light candle.
Back in my room,
the yellow flame
makes shadows dance
on the walls.
“Okay,” Bird tweets,
and he hops up on my chair
and from there onto my desk.
“I’m ready.”
I pause, hands hovering
over the candle.
“We should both close our eyes this time.”
Bird looks back at me
with his vacant orbs.
“Right.” I clear my throat.
Bird nods.
I close my eyes and say,
in my most proper voice,
“I wish to reverse this accidental wish
and return these bird bones
to their previous lifeless form.”
I’m not sure
how I knew to say that
(but it sounded good).
Then
there’s a clacking of
claws on wood.
I open my eyes.
Bird is flapping his wing bones
and hopping
up and down.
“Sorry… you were sitting with your eyes closed
for so long…”
I sigh
and blow out the candle.
“Nothing seems to be working.”
We sit there,
wondering how
we’re going to find a way
to unwish
a wish
that I never intended to make.
full moon
I walk over to my bedroom window
and lean out to breathe in
warm currents of air.
Crickets scrape sharply in the grass.
Hey, it’s a full moon, Nico whispers in my ear.
“Magic happens on the night
of a full moon,” I say aloud.
This is what Nico said
on the night of every full moon
as he looked at the moon phases chart
taped to our bedroom wall.
“What did you say?” Bird tweets
from behind me.
I turn from the window.
“Oh, it’s just… it’s a full moon, and
the moonlight was shining in
when I wished
you were alive.
I wonder if it was some kind of…”
“Moon magic?” Bird prompts.
“Maybe. But I don’t know how to
use the magic again
to unwish my wish.”
Bird inclines his head toward
the open window.
“I think you mean
curse.”
curse
“Curse?” I repeat
in a small voice.
Bird nods.
There’s a pulse in the air,
which could be
the river-rush of my heartbeat.
“The light of the full moon
must have streamed in on me through your window
when you made your wish…
I mean,
curse.”
I clench my hands together,
remembering the way
the moonlight fell bright
across the bird bones
on my desk.
“But I wished you were alive!
How is that a curse?”
Bird sighs.
“Wishing for a once-living thing
to be alive again,
the way it was,
goes against the laws of nature.
I cannot be as I was,
so the moon’s power has transformed me into
something
no creature should be.”
Heat blooms in my face
as I realize that
I have indeed
cursed this poor creature.
“I know you didn’t mean to,”
Bird says gently,
but somehow his sweet voice
makes me feel even worse.
“There must be some way
to change you back.”
I look around the room.
My eyes fall on the bookshelf,
with Nico’s
books about space
lining the bottom shelves.
Remember the Encyclopedia of Moon Magic
? Nico’s whisper leaves a silver trail.
We used to read it under the blankets. “Yes!” I say aloud.
With a fresh flicker of hope,
I reach over
and shuffle through the books.
A heavy hardback
thuds onto the wooden floor.
Bird and I jump
like startled jackrabbits.
There’s a pause in Nonna Frankie’s snoring
and then
my bedroom door starts to open.
sterilize
Nonna Frankie steps into my room.
Out of the corner of my eye
I see Bird flop
onto the floor
and lie
still.
I try not to look at Bird
as Nonna Frankie asks,
“What are you doing?”
I twist my hands together.
“Oh… we were just…”
Nonna Frankie has a crease
in her forehead.
“We?”
“I mean…
I… I was just…
playing with my animal bones.
And I accidentally dropped one.”
And that’s when Nonna Frankie spots Bird,
gleaming in the lamplight.
She sniffs.
“Did you sterilize that thing?”
I shake my head.
“Huh. First thing tomorrow then.”
“First thing,” I echo,
my hands still twisting.
Nonna Frankie nods toward my bed.
“Sleep. This can wait.”
She stands still
as I slide back into bed,
pulling the sheets up to my chin.
Nonna Frankie switches my lamp off
with a click
then reaches to pat my arm.
“Want me to stay?”
Now that Mum’s not here
it’s Nonna Frankie who often sits
on the edge of my bed
until I fall asleep again,
immoveable as a mountain.
But this time I shake my head.
“Nah. I’m okay.”
I close my eyes,
waiting for Nonna Frankie’s footsteps
to shuffle
back across the hallway.
moon magic
As soon as Nonna Frankie’s snoring starts up again,
I slip out of bed,
fumbling for my flashlight
in the bottom drawer of my bedside table.
Nico and I had used this flashlight
for nighttime reading under our blanket fort.
But now
the light sputters weakly
when I switch it on.
“Needs new batteries,” I mutter
as the light finds Bird.
The glow shines straight through
his hollow eye sockets
(which looks kind of weird
so I lower the beam).
“What were you looking for
on the shelf?” Bird whispers.
“I’m searching for
the
Encyclopedia of Moon Magic,”
I whisper back,
edging over to the heavy book
on the floor.
“I think this could be it!”
I flip the book
to show the cover
and shine the flashlight over it.
“Oh,” I sigh.
It’s a book about how
black holes are formed.
Not moon magic.
Bird hops down to me.
“Keep looking,” he urges.
I shine my flashlight over the spines
of the books lining the shelves.
There are books about
birds
and planes
and the planets
and our universe.
But no
Encyclopedia of Moon Magic.
I lower the flashlight beam.
Flap flap flutter flutter go the dark-edged feathers
against my rib cage.
“Maybe we should take a break.”
Bird’s voice shimmers
like moonlight on water.
“We can continue tomorrow.”
I nod and yawn,
suddenly aware of how
bone-achingly tired
I feel.
Bird shuffles away
to the dark space
under my desk.
Eyes heavy,
I lie back on my pillow
Soft birdsong falls
into the blue dawn.
