rising

They were pavers, actually, between stray cypress, growing tight to the ground.  Awful stuff, cypress.  /I hated it, but it came with the house/  She must've been too busy with her roses to pull it.  We'd buried a bird in a reebok shoe box, it'd flown into the plate glass front window.  We had left it on the garbage can while at school.  It was dead when we got off the bus.  To see something  dead, so close.  Beak open, claw curled dead.  We buried it by the cypress.  A few days later our dog dug it up.  Maggots.  I stood on the pavers as my older brother dowsed it in lighter fluid and dropped a match.  End over end, the smoke went up.  Bird soul into the air.