Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

Jim Whiteside

We are in the trophy room, facing a wall of glass-eyed,
lacquered things, when he says, I will never understand
this country’s obsession with hunting. We linger
in the unicorn room. On the top floor, we find
a small cabin covered in crow feathers, some kind
of extinct buffalo. Last month, we had drinks
with an old flame and his new husband. The way
he looks at you, I can tell. He’s still in love with you,
he said, the next morning, sitting at the kitchen table,
resting his hand on the brass pitcher we’d just filled
with fresh flowers. It’s not hard to understand, not really,
the urge to fight the ephemeral. The hunter lifts a bird
from the dog’s mouth and can possess it forever.
This just doesn’t work that way.