The metal bars drape her trembling body with the criss-crosses light gives some beings as a temporary tattoo, she nests at the bottom. He, however, is restlessly jerking from one perch to another, his neck tilting, contorting, at times as stretched as a cockerel’s. Her under feathers have a layer of dark crust, the back of her neck is raw from his picking. Beyond the cage, feeling godly, I unhinge the door to evacuate her first (a small head start). He is already at the door; the cage has sprouted a new head, taking aim. I cup his body in my hands, one overlapping his beating wings, the other supporting his ringed claws. He clings to my index to better take off, vertically. There he trembles, neck twitching, suspended to the same square. She has kept quiet, hidden behind propped canvas. She picks at the carpet industriously but the ruffle of her train against the fabric give her away. Crooning, he lands on her back, his splayed wings steady him, like a hand spread out on a card table: “innocent” it says. This time she wins, and shakes him off. They travel through the room, she leads him around the sofa, into the undergrowth of the writing desk and through the rug with its dense follicle, rising like tentacles around their beaks. Sticky feathers like cupped hands follow their trail but the light soon betrays through the basin of the cage their shadows returned to the crisscross embrace. The door is left dangling limply open and useless.