The Priory Lit. Mag

I know why a bird will die of asphyxia if it does not sing. I saw one once, walking home from school one day deep in the month of October. It was not typical October weather, biting cold but sunny. The sun never made it through the gray sheet of clouds that rolled overhead like dirty sheep fur. Thunder whispered prophecies of rain and I was walking faster than usual to try and make it home before the water fell. My mother would be furious if I got wet and tracked mud all over the house. I was walking alone, backpack thumping heavily against my back when I saw a lump ahead on the side of the road. When I got closer I saw that it was a blue bird, splayed and broken on the ground. It was visibly laboring to breathe; its sides rose and sank and its tail feathers looked like a worn feather duster. I reached my hand out and its little blue head lifted and looked at me with eyes like the night sky. I saw my first glimpse of hopelessness in those eyes. Cars zoomed by and I could feel rain begin to patter on the back of my head. I was crying. The little blue bird chirped once, weakly, as I gingerly picked it up and began jogging towards home with it. My heavy backpack threw me off balance as I ran, so I flung it to the ground, one arm waving wildly behind me to release it, the other cradling the bird. It was raining fully now, and the bird pressed to my chest was soaked, its feathers pressed down like matted hair. The bird was dead far before I stopped running. I fell to my knees and placed the bird back on the side of the road, saliva and tears dripping from my face. Cars still drove by, indifferent. I hated them. I had fallen in an ocean of mud and rain water and I was soaking it up like a sponge, my lungs clogging. I screamed at the next cars that drove by, my words clapping brutally together in a primal scream of God Damn You. But unlike Jonah, my plunge into the dark waters did nothing to stop the on coming storm, full of wrath of fury.