A starling lifts itself from the wire, and a thousand starlings follow, spiraling into the sky. They are pouring in from the treetops, from the roofline—the sky is roiling with wheeling birds, each one an animate cell.
In spring the bush honeysuckle shelters the bluebird fledglings and the brown wrens. In summer the honeysuckle flowers open to the eager bees. In fall the honeysuckle feeds the cedar waxwings, who cling to the bending stems and pass the berries to flock mates who cannot reach. In winter the honeysuckle waits, gathering itself to spring forth, to wrap its roots around what rightly belongs. To choke it out.
Behold the fearsome lionfish, its spines fanning out like a mane, its stripes an underwater circus act, its translucent fins an exotic veil. Behold the gorgeous lionfish floating unmolested in foreign waters, passing near the small creatures at home here and gulping them down, whole.
The lymph nodes are clusters of grapes, ripe, though there will be no wine. They swell and swell with cancer, malignant cells spilling over and spreading, clinging and growing, spilling and spreading and clinging and growing and spilling and spreading and spreading and spreading.