I've Got a Bird

“I’ve Got a Bird to Whistle and I’ve Got a Bird to Sing”
by anonymous


1.He stands. The ground beneath his feet describes a gentle, gradual slope; an easement, which moves imperceptibly downward to the place that delineates the difference between earth and road. This is the place where the dewgrass ends and pavement takes over. He tries to lift his head, to look up to the sky, but the dreadful weight of air and the ruminating thunderheads force down on him, halting any upward progress. He wants to look up so that he wont be looking forward.

2.Forward. Despite every attempt to seal his eyes, to clinch the lids and blacken the landscape he looks ever forward at the ruin before him. It never occurs to him that he could look down at the brown surface of his work boots, or at the grass that those boots are wrecking.

3.Wrecked. The Ford Taurus is resting well into the median just behind him. The front grille has become concave: bent inward. The hood has crumpled, and popped upward, opening just slightly to release tendrils of off-white steam mixed with heavy oily smoke that wends its way into the darkening sky.

4.Sky. The sky seems to be constricting around him. Now sirens are in the distance. He thinks that the air around him tastes vaguely of stale champagne. He rubs his palms against his face, and tries to remember how to breathe again.

5.Again, forward. In front of him is the ruin, the ravaged body that had been a brown haired little girl racing across the four lanes after a bright blue rubber ball that had somehow slipped away from her grasp and gone bouncing against the cold concrete. Now she was disjointed, bloody and strewn out along highway 62 like bits of a broken doll. Long black skid marks led up to the place where her little body in its flower print dress had gone airborne.

6.Somewhere near by a bird sings as the first drops of rain begin to fall.