They walk among you — alone, dark-eyed, fragile-hearted. Neglected and ignored, just like us children of the sky, flitting through suburban nights like dusky tears. O humanity — don't fear. We shall pluck them from the gutters, the puddles, the grime. We shall set them free.
One day, mark our words, they will grow wings and meet us in the sky.
Service Road 9 dangles like a slick black hangnail over the muddy ravine walls. It's flanked by a stand of swaying powerlines, their cables crackling as our flock lands on the ice-etched wires.
A boy is seated atop the guardrail below, which bends like a strained smile over the beaten-steel river beneath.
He's a Bird Soul — we can tell. Dark eyes, pale hair, sky jacket. We like him instantly.
Or maybe it's just because he has french fries.
We hop back and forth on the powerlines, ruffling our feathers against the December breeze as we eye the tantalizing paper bag resting on his knees.
He eats his fries slowly, savoring each crisp yellow piece like it's the last. We're impatient: the blank white sky is donning its vesper grays, and our nighttime roosts are calling.
A ringtone shatters the air and the Boy pulls it from his pocket, the fractured screen reflecting his frown as he pushes the Accept button.
"Reese!" The word snaps the air like a whip, followed by a clatter of background noise.
"Mama?" He says cautiously, using the word like a shield.
"Where in hell has your slacker arse been?" the Mama snarls through the screen. "If I find you've been playing hooky with your lowlife friends..."
We coo in sympathy and distrust. Friends? This Boy is alone. Cold. Featherless. Abandoned.
"I was picking up dinner, Mama," he whispers.
"About time! At least you have sense, not like your frickin' father. He couldn't bear to care about me, not when those city slickers were paying so much. The City was Calling, that arse."
Metal clangs in the background.
"He just wanted a chance to leave me. Everyone leaves me. Pah! But you won't, Reese." she says, voice turning sticky sweet. "You're my son. You'll never leave me."
He echoes her words in a whisper, fingers tracing the round red mark on his palm — a cigarette's calling card.
"I'll never leave you."
The call ends and he blinks away freezing tears as he gets to his feet, balancing lightly on the guardrail rim.
The humming powerline transformers and rustling branches form an offbeat rhythm, and he sways gently into their song.
The take-out bag rustles in the wind and he gently nudges it with his sneaker, spilling golden fries and still-warm burgers onto the asphalt.
Unleashed, he leaps into motion, swaying, twirling, leaping, following the steps of a dance that rises to match his racing breath.
We take flight around him, darting for the discarded food and enveloping him in a windstorm of wings.
He freezes, balanced atop one hand, fingers gripping the thrumming metal, feet thrown towards the sky, tears frozen.
He turns to the darkening horizon and exhales, once.
And then—
He leaps.
Weightless. Airborne. Untouchable.
Here, in free-fall, he finds his feathers.
In the heartbeat between hope and calamity, his soul is a bird.
...
The river slides through the night, carrying our parting cries as its silver eddies seek the sea.
The Boy floats gently, arms outstretched, jacket soaked, the moon cradled in his dark eyes.
Perhaps the sun is shining in the City, he thinks.
He smiles.
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I listened to Suburbia by Pet Shop Boys on repeat while reading this... now it's stuck in my head, possibly forever...
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