Taylor Constantino

Love Needs No Wings

I try not to think

about what happened to the bones of the robin on impact.

“They are hollow, poor dears!”

Old doves titter in their puffed

feathered hats, skitting around the corpse.

“Never learned to tuck enough coins in their empty space,”

goes the tutting of their tongues.

Wrinkled ravens guffaw

as they look down through monocled eyes

from the wire, they walk

“Well, that’s a bloody disasta!”

They light a smoke off scorched tree stumps, kissing stripped wires.

Because no blood means there must be no harm.

But the magpie

kneels down,

and lays a single bottle cap over the robin’s open eyes

and lays there a while in silent vigil.

Loving this stranger

back to the ground.


Taylor Constantino is a senior at SUNY Geneseo studying English adolescent education with a concentration in creative writing. Taylor loves to sing and is a firm believer that cake is an all-the-time food.