Last month’s editorial page lay rumpled on my floor. Its letters graying and damp-wrinkled, edges curling upward. Broken shells that once held sunflower seeds piled in one corner and a plastic mirror with a silenced bell in the other. How that bell drove me crazy with its incessant, cheap-metal jingle! In retrospect, it wasn’t really that bad. Who would have thought I’d miss the annoying tickle-poke of tiny claws scratching up and down my wires, across and every-which-way? But I do. And the musty fragrance of pastel feathers, some of which are still stuck to me, fluffy reminders of the chirps and tweets that used to be — when I was someone’s home.
aka, The Abject Muse 
Tell it like it is