GOLDIE
This is how it would happen, if we had stayed rescuing birds.
It is September, the days are hot and humid, but for the first time in my life, I am not in a classroom.
Classrooms are gone, someone else is in my seat there, and I am in the world.
I am walking down the street in an outfit carefully curated: brown wedge sandals, denim shorts, a white vest, a blue shirt unbuttoned and hanging loosely.
My hair is long and straight, and my nails are manicured for the first time.
Someone stops me and asks if I’m a model.
I invite Crow and Cuckoo and Starling and Wren to live with me because I love them, and we have remained friends, the five of us, no matter what.
Because I am successful, I can help with their dreams. Soon enough, we have conquered everything.
And it works because we are together. Because once upon a time we rescued a bird and that has got to stand for something, hasn’t it?
Before we turned monstrous.
It does not happen like that because I am dying.
In the process of it. I am falling to my death.
The ground, always there for me before, is now my maker.
I remember lying in the grass in summers long gone, staring up at the sky, feeling safe and warm and secure, and this is how it betrays me.
Bishop’s House is far away and up close all at once.
I was dancing on its roof a second ago, and now it has betrayed me too.
After we turned monstrous, the five of us have never been the same again.
Here I am, leaving the nest first.
A second is a very long time when it is the last one you will ever have.
It’s okay though. I am soaring, I am flying.
I close my eyes and aim for the light.
You’ll have bright futures. You’ve earned them.