what a cardinal means this late in the season

when i stayed over at your house  
this winter i watched the bird feeder
in your yard each morning. i'm not one
of those people who can name birds,
so i just watched them eat, imagining
what i might be like if i had a beak
to eat my bowl of peanut-butter balls cereal.
i loved the cardinal & i pretended he
was in charge of making sure everyone got fed,
even knocking some seeds to the plump squirrels
who circled the base of the feeder.
the night before i asked myself terrible questions 
like "what do you want out of life?"
& "who are you?" i repeated the questions
to the birds, who all looked at me
strangely wanting nothing to do with 
my human problems. this winter was mild 
& every time it snowed the dusting 
of white melted almost immediately. i had just 
had gender surgery which is a clean way of
saying i happily had my breasts cut off.
i wondered where all that skin went.
i asked the birds again &  this time the cardinal 
responded that he assumed they disposed
of it appropriately. i told him that i wasn't
thinking literally, i meant that maybe 
the skin grew on another creature, maybe became
a embryo or something like that. the cardinal
was confused. i didn't know your family
hired a woman to clean that morning so she startled me 
coming up from  behind me while i was staring at the feeder, 
talking deeply with birds.
she said "a cardinal this late in the season
is good luck." i told her i was sorry i 
hadn't introduced myself earlier
& "i see him every day, the cardinal."
she shrugged & replied, "well, it's still good luck."
when she left i asked the cardinal himself 
if he was good luck & he said he wasn't sure.
i opened the back sliding glass door 
& all the birds scattered. i said "it's just me,
i watch you all every morning." inspecting 
the perches & the seed sprinkled all over the ground
i hoped that maybe my skin became a cardinal.
the name cardinal comes from the latin word 
"cardo" meaning axis. i think axis is another
word for scar. my scars started to hurt
so i went in  the bathroom to change the gauze 
& out flew two cardinals so i opened the window
to let them out with the others.