The following story is an experiment in a “rough-verse“ storytelling. I want to get more of my meandering stories onto the site alongside my personal updates. Most—like this one—will be first drafts as I move more value onto practice than perfection. This is a start.
Magpie’s Menagerie
by Kat Dornian
Magpie collects her things.
A beautiful array of knick and knacks:
Buttons and foil, beetles and fluff.
Magpie arranges them, day in and out.
Adding to her hoard, lovingly displaying
the ribbons and caps, rocks and cones.
Magpie searches for more.
Flitting about for the debris left out
on steps, on stones and hidden in coves.
Magpie is never satisfied.
Magpie re-arranges, again, everyday.
Button here, ribbon there, fluff below, rock above.
Her newest foil scrap lacks a spot.
Magpie places and re-organizes.
Worrying about the collection —
trying the foil here, the foil there.
The lovely foil
Wind blows a mighty gust.
Catches foil, carries it away:
Flitting and floating, falling and falling.
Magpie sails after foil.
But she’s too late.
Lovely shiny sparkly foil, caught by River.
River takes foil far
while Magpie screams down stream—
desperate cackles and mournful titters.
Wind and River pass by.
Watch Magpie as she woefully sorts
buttons… beetles… fluff.
Magpie spies on River.
She pleas with Wind at every sunset,
expecting her foil to be returned.
“Foil is long gone, far past,”
River and Wind whisper to Magpie.
Still, Magpie clears the perfect spot.
River turns to ice, Wind turns cold.
Magpie nestles deep in her nest:
Beetles and rocks, buttons and ribbons.
An old scrap tickles her.
A treasure long neglected
across the months of spring to autumn.
Magpie remembers now —
the way the tarnished thing shone before it was forgotten
and coaxes it from hiding to its spot.
The lovely foil.
Wind may one day play though
and take old foil to the River.
But now, it cradles under Magpie’s breast.
Treasure for this moment.
Kat Dornian 