Makeshift

At first you were just an empty grape punnet stacked with the recycling, lightweight but weatherproof; a thing that would last longer than me, long after me and the medley of birds commandeering our apple tree. I found an old flower crown from some forgotten summer, snipped it in the centre and looped it through the middle holes, where seven mauve peonies arched like a sickle, settling into newfound shape. Then came the weight – a rickle of robin feed, safflower seeds orange dappled by the sun nosing its way into my kitchen, raisins puckered to a leathery polyp, other pips, nuts, seeds, that I cannot name and a number of freeze-dried mealworms, favourite of the songbirds, turning with each step. No longer just an empty filmy body, but a body of matter transient as water, behind my hands carrying you out into the garden and up to the tree, hooking you over the severed branch, the stumped limb, who seemed to enjoy such adornments. From this vantage point, over grey mud forming my birthmark’s likeness, over sleeping larvae moulting their former selves, I watch you, my new relic, being rocked by circling winds carried over from god-knows-where. In a patch of red sun a bumble-bee tries out your infertile flowers. A blue tit twitches, belly full. More have come to gather now, to cling to you, unfettered.