Two Small Birds
Stay I did. Through the fall, and into the winter, and before we knew it, spring had come. And though we waited for Narcissus, he did not return.
If I turn my head at just the right moment, I catch the edge of an emerald tail, wings whirring in repetition, but at the lip of the feeder, for a moment they are still. I crane my neck to try and watch the crown of [his] head bob, slender bill dipping towards the plastic flowers, and the promise of sugar water. My small, flighty friend, I’ve named [him] Samson. I like the idea that he’ll come each day and share a drink, I set my coffee on the sill and continue writing, not looking up again until I can hear the beat of [his] wings through the glass. To stay is not the same as to be kept. I hope that he will stay, even if it is, only for a moment.
The sun dapples are just beginning, as the strange little bird we’ve nicknamed Narcissus, begins his daily dance against the window pane - in love with his own reflection. Two days into the summer plans that have been stretching ahead of me since mid-April I can’t quite shake the phrase, “you can stay as long as you like.” It swims ahead of me in a long and winding fashion, like a horizon line. There are the mountainous peaks of the “w,” the soft curves of the “a’s” the steep and treacherous drop of the “t.” If you change the phrase only slightly, “however long you need,” the weight of it all shifts entirely. I don’t remember now if she said this to me or if I said this to her. Perhaps more significantly, I know it does not matter, because stay I did. Through the fall, and into the winter, and before we knew it, spring had come. And though we waited for Narcissus, he did not return.
