"No Home for Baby Robins" by KS Palakovic

CW: Abortion

There are no birds on the highway.

They don’t nest in streetlamps

as the metal machines screech past,

relentless as weather.

No soft down mothers huddle in their twiggy beds,

feeding earthworms to eager mouths.

This is no world for babies.

All grey with salt and soot

and when a lone berry falls onto the asphalt,

we warn the hungry crow away, before it’s crushed

by the tide of modern progress.

So I’ll push the infants out of my womb

before they’re ready, before they can even try

to forage a life in this place,

this paved-over road where flowers will never grow.

Let their souls rest in the ether,

a dream someone else can enjoy

from a green field where robins sing.

KS Palakovic (she/her) is a queer disabled princess. Born in Hamilton, Canada’s city of waterfalls and steel, she is currently wandering catlike through the country looking for her forever home. Please send treats.