Britt Melewski
Issue 12 • March 2014
I’d like if they discussed it— these birds. I want them to decide to leave before the cold settles in, before they do. I'd like there to have been words: pros and cons outlined, scratched out, nailed to a clumsy sapling, debated. I’d like it if an ill-looking tern with a shattered wing spoke unrelentingly—anxious with his pitches—despite his wound, his keeper—just a little bit of blood. I want a redbreast to feel misunderstood, underappreciated, empty of another reason; I want a humbled sparrow to think about what it means to label a self attached, promised to a group or place; penny-throated hummingbird to awaken under a quilt he’s never smelled before and ask, where the hell am I? I want a jay that has been known as powerful, even headstrong, to storm off and away from the friends he's loved most dearly, and feel sorry to the grains of his meek marrow that he said what he said, for how thinly he said it.