Tammi with an I

One of my students tells me of her good friend Tammi,
spelled with an “I,” who rescued an injured white ibis
from the center of a busy Florida roadway. She wrapped
the limp bird in a spare towel to shuttle it to her car,
only to be speared in the eye by its long, slender beak
when she tried to lift it. Yet still she drove, one eye open,
all the way to the avian sanctuary 40 minutes away
so that the bird’s wing—which dangled off-kilter
like a bath cloth hung from an untidy towel rack—
could be reset and bandaged before tending to herself.
After the infection cleared, while she wore a patch
and waited for a prosthetic to be crafted, she began
calling herself just Tam, or Tammi-without-an-I
on her Starbucks cups and online usernames, because
what else does the strange laughter of birds teach us
if not to have a sense of humor? I picture this girl,
Tammi-without-an-I, as the sort who is a warrior
in the yellow light of hurricanes, a steady medic
in the battlefield of extinctions. Being a martyr is easy
when the cause is righteous, says my favorite poet.
Still, I let myself be surprised that so much love exists.

Oliver Brooks (he/they) is a poet and MFA student at Florida State University. His work appears or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, New Delta Review, Cream City Review, Variant Literature, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. He serves as poetry editor for the Southeast Review.