Poem by Susan Denning in Shampoo Issue 36

They leave their nests and their foreheads ache.
They think the day wants to hurt them.

So when I wore my owl suit the atoms of owls
shifted inside me. I climbed into the sky

and they believed me possible owl. I flapped my wings
like night and hidden but I was not so sure

an owl. First I wore the body and then
I wore the head and when I asked for trees

they gave me trees but not how I wanted,
not like limbs to practice dives from sky to bigger sky,

but trees that bent their branches to land me
safely in the sky. Daughter on the ground

but in the sky I rested. When the night was tall
my wings, where trees became more trees and then a sky

to sleep in. A nest and what I found inside cracked shells
and molting. And what I saw was shadows. My sister owls

were far above me. The ground a long way down
and nothing in the trees that heard me.