Page 2 of The Black Flamingo

---

like a bad egg that

was not meant to be, like

a dummy egg cracked open,

an impossible thing, but somehow

living and thriving, defying the

zookeepers’ intentions, an experiment

they watch and patiently wait to see

what might become of me, to see

how I survive, without complete

love.

I was born in London,

two months before the end of the world,

on October 31, 1999.

Mummy tells me,

“When we got closer to the millennium,

people thought planes would fall from the sky

and clocks in computers would go back

one hundred years. But time cannot go back.

We can only move forward.”

I am a baby, just hatched.

My only feathers are my tiny eyelashes.

Over my gurgling, I don’t hear my father

telling Mummy, “I’m too young to be a dad.”

Mummy tells me all this, when I’m old enough.

How six days before the millennium,

she burned their Christmas dinner

and he shouted, “You’re useless!”

before throwing his plate down, turkey

stuck to the kitchen floor, and I cried,

startled by early indoor fireworks.

---