Re-purposed

I accidentally poisoned Lionel.
He's a bird.
Yellow with gray, small and can't say a damn thing.
Just chirps and kinda bugs the shit out of me, all day long and into the night.
He was a charity case, flew into our house four years ago
Mangled wing.
I thought he was my calling.
Yellow sign from god
To be a better mother than I was
a person.
He was an addition to my prior purpose of: kitchen fixture
A wonderful title for a woman whose hands are faucets and
Nails are knives
And skin is scouring pads.
This was my purpose prior.
Now Lionel was my purpose.
That and still being a kitchen fixture of course.
So I went to Petsmart, bought a cage
too large for the house
And bird feed, and all the fixin's of a good good home.
Even splint him up, based on internet research,
And fixed him almost new.
Four years straight I was fixin' up every few or so hours
Flax and seed, stove top stuffing and minced meat and
zucchini bread and once a sip of red wine.
He didn't chirp right for a whole night, but
He chirped.
So years of cutting up grapes and sauteing celery and little fixin's
For Lionel, the yellow bird in the big cage
And standing there at the sink
A flesh covered kitchen fixture steely and sometimes
Walking to the bathroom to fix my makeup
For no one but Lionel
Or to the cage to empty his water
Or fill his water
Or clean his crap
Or say goodnight
Or see him standing, cock-eyed at me
Like I hadn't a brain in my head to believe
Really
That he was anything more than a strange flying accident.
Sorry Lionel, I sometimes say out loud.
How was I to think any different.
He was something that happened on a day when
Nothing else happened so he must have meant
Something.
Well, who'd have thunk it right, four years to the day
When into that window he came
I sickened him up so bad
That I thought he was a goner.
Woke up that morning,
walked over and said "good morning"
Walked into the kitchen
Which greeted me not a bit
Except with a foul odor of disdain
that I had abandoned my position for the night to sleep
Without cleaning its sink thoroughly the evening before.
After all this, I shout -
All I've tried to do and all I'm trying to do
to save a bird and feed him all the good fixin's a good mother
Would give to a broken wing miracle, my good calling
From somewhere
My kitchen gives not a single rat's ass
Just gives me hell that I ain't a better permanent fixture
Or a better flat surface to be cut on.
So I right there gave up,
Let it all be,
Dirty damn pots and pans and plates and forks and
Sharp dinner knives I prefer over butter knives when cutting up
All Lionel's good fixin's.
And they piled and they piled and they piled up more
Counter to counter when I
Gave up my kitchen fixture status, a big ole' middle finger F.U.
to my label as a fixture, and I decided I'd concentrate all happy and free
On being a better mother.
Well,
Dr. Vet Patricia looked at me accusin' and said "After a battery of tests,
we've determined by his bloodwork that he's been infected by:
Salmonella."
Turns out all my trying to be free from being a kitchen fixture
landed me a sick as a dog bird, poisoned from those
Damn dirty countertops and all those dishes I vetoed
Like law.
So for two days, Lionel was chirpin like a cross-covered dirt mound.
That means, not chirpin much at all
But a few sickly squawks.
But I resuscitated him back for
What I believe is his third go at life
My second motherly victory
And he's chirpin away again
Not happy or sad or wondering what happened or anything
Quite at all as much as I can tell
Just chirpin all damn day and night and seeming like
He could live forever and thinkin' about why.
And I'm back, flesh covered kitchen fixture
Scrubbing the bleachin' shit off those counters
And out of that sink
Every second hour of every single day
Back plain as dead
And keepin' whoever I can alive.