We recently published Meg Pokrass’s heartbreaking “The Rescue.”
Here, we ask her two questions about her story:
1) You manage to encapsulate this relationship in so few words. For you, what makes this particular relationship come alive in this story?
I have to admit that this one is entirely CNF. About five years ago, I started seeing a much older man, a poet, and he told me this story about the 100 or so parakeets he used to own. How they died in a matter of minutes, all of them. The story affected me deeply. We were sharing our hardest moments in life. I was in the middle of a divorce and he was in the middle of something similar. There was a penetrating feeling of loss in my world, and this sweet man loved to make me laugh. When he wasn’t sharing stories about sad times, he was cracking me up.
2) So, you probably can’t tell us — but how did the parakeets die?
Avian flu. I can still see it in my mind.
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