may 20th, 1981
Idonia Street, St Paul Deptford, GREENWICH
•••
Dearest little birdy,
I've often thought about naming you. As human beings, we feel a need to give names to things of sentimental value. But I suppose it's somewhat rude of me to refer to you as an object of sentimental value because you aren't: you are a living, breathing creature and you are more intelligent that I might think and I wanted to name you but nothing quite fits.
I've decided to just call you 'little birdy'. Childish—I agree—but it seems to fit you since you are after all, a tiny bird. With your bright blue wings and colorful belly. I'd try to do a bit of research on you, since you're really the first bird like this I've come across, but I cant seem to find anything right. And finding a bird so iridescent like you made me realize that nothing interesting ever happens in this town, we're all just demented, waiting for something to happen.
Too dumb to leave or just quite too stuck. That's what I think. I'm not sure which category I fit into. Perhaps I'm just too crazy to leave, even though I'm fully aware that there is more outside this town's walls. Like being tied to a terrible lover because there is a hope in you that he won't touch you like that again, or he won't raise his voice at you again. And I believe that's what humans are: our cells are made of hope and that's what makes us stay.
As a disturbed eighteen year old girl, I suppose you will find it hard to believe that I still attend school: not because I'm older than most in my classes, but because with the mind I have, you may think I find it difficult to keep up. I am just as intelligent, just as special as all the blonde girls with blue eyes and short skirts, I'm just as smart as all the people with perfect scores.
I've just got a touch of something crazy.
Today as I walked to school today, I counted on my fingertips the hours I would spend behind those doors, learning about things I knew I wouldn't need in the future. I counted the friends I had on one hand, I counted the people who despised me on another. But I forced myself to breathe and relax— nothing good ever came out of panic.
I haven't yet told you about these people who ostracize me, but I don't like to bother with them. They don't like people like me. With dark hair and paler skin, freckles that line the bridge of my nose, and skin that barely clings to my bones.
You're not meant to like people like me.
Mama used to call me a wallflower, and for the longest time I used to think it had to do with what I looked like. I believed wallflowers were beautiful children with beautiful big eye and jet black hair and freckles dancing on their bodies. I used to believe I was a special Queen, an important person.
A wallflower.
But that was not it, I had become an element of the forgotten world. Mama later told me that people like me didn't really talk to people, we liked to be alone most of the time. But that's a whole load of nonsense to my ears. I still think she's wrong, just because I'm 'different' doesn't mean my emotions cease to exist.
~INDYLULU
