Letters to Darcy: An LGBTQ+ Novella

September 3, 2014:

September 3, 2014:

Dear Darcy,

I've seen many extraordinary things during my innumerable excursions through White Mill Park. I've locked eyes with the occasional doe or fox. I've found myself breathlessly basking in fields of flowers—hidden meadows, like in The Secret Garden. Most often, I've found myself visited by my little stoat friend, that familiar arrowhead ripple a herald's song announcing his arrival. This, however, was quite different.

As I trudged through the underbrush, hiking so deeply into the woods that I hesitate to honestly place myself within the grounds of White Mill, I glanced up into the abstract arrangement of leaves formed in the treetops, overhead. Admiring the intense artistry of nature, my eyes settled, only for a moment, on a small, bright red bird. I'd seen this type of bird many times before—a cardinal. I watched for a while as it sang its song. But suddenly, right in front of my eyes, it turned its back and vanished into the labyrinthine formation of branches. It did not fly away. Rather, it seemingly ceased to exist, altogether. My eyes darted around the complex landscape of branches—a pit of snakes, weaving in and out, in constant motion with the rhythm of the wind. Just as I began to lose hope—rationalizing the likelihood that it did fly away—there it was again, bright as ever, and unstirred like no time had passed, at all.

The strangeness of the event only stirred in my mind, and suddenly, I felt myself vaulting forward, unable to control my body. My feet pushed. My arms pulled. And, in no time, I found myself fifteen feet above the ground—fifteen feet closer to the bird. At that point, I was close enough to see the strangeness in the patterns of its feathers.

Like many birds, the feathers of a cardinal are defined, in color, by its gender. Male cardinals take on a bright, blindingly red design, whereas females have a more muted, taupe-colored palette. This one, however, was different. Just through a thick of branches and leaves, I could see clearly that the bird—perched nonchalantly upon a thin, switch of a branch—was split evenly down the center; half red, half tan. The creature looked like a product of one of Doctor Frankenstein's experiments—like it had been sewn together, using two, crudely-scissored halves of different birds.

Despite the striking redness of its left half, if the bird wanted to hide itself from me, all it would have to do is rotate 180º, as it had, before.

Later that evening, I lay across the living room sofa, television sounding in the background, as my iPhone screen lit up my face with information regarding the strange anomaly. It's something called gyndromorphism. Essentially, when born, the bird's cells divided in such a way that left it half-male and half-female. This leaves me curious about the possibility of it affecting humans. No, nothing to the extent of being split down the center, but in a sense, would the resulting feeling of being lost within your own body echo the mental and emotional impact of something like gender dysphoria in a person born intersex?