What use is a mute songbird?
A question that a simpleton like I, Henry Samson Burgess, would’ve asked just days prior. We look at this world as if it is just cut and paste. Like we expect everything we see, every person we meet, and each experience we have, to fit into a stainless steel mold like the dough of a bland pastry. Indeed, we are all made with the same elements, but sometimes pieces of hidden eggshell are baked into one of the innocently human-shaped morsels.
Sometimes it’s glass.
I considered myself one of these ‘special’ cases for a long time. A man with no special name, no physical recessive traits that made me stand out from the other carbon copies surrounding, or otherworldly achievements these work-absorbed motherfuckers receive from figuratively cutting off their fingers and toes. No, what I had was a fully functioning mind. The ability to see right through these ‘people’. People… More like robots.
But, to be fair, I was also stuck in the gravitational pull of rituals. Of the urban jungle. Though I also had a very special hobby.
I woke people up.
For every person, it takes a different amount of time. Some are more dense than others, and a few are just plain unwilling. It’s worth it, however.
Watching their eyes slowly widen, pupils shrinking to the size of pen-point sized dots, the occasional murmur of “My God”, sobs for the waste of their time. The feeling you get from watching it over and over again is magnificent. The feeling that you’re less alone than you were the day before, if only for a short time.
But that too had become ritual, until I took a stroll through the neighborhood park one day. While walking through the blooming foliage a fine spring morning, something shiny caught my eye just off the side of the beaten path.
Beautiful curly golden hair shone like endless fields of wheat just before the harvest, which elegantly fell against what appeared to be a contrast of soft, pale skin. A small blush on the cheeks here, big, bright blue eyes there. It started out like every cliche love story you can think of. Tender lips just centimeters away from a silver instrument held ever so delicately in those fragile fingers. It wasn’t until I realized what she was doing that a chipper melody flowed through my ears, the attention from my distracted brain falling back from it’s focus on sight. She couldn’t have been older than 16, but the music left her being like the spirit of a content individual who had completed their life’s work.
By no means am I an impulsive person. Generally, it’s quite the opposite. But she stirred something in me that even the highest of IQ’s could not rationalize. Like the stumbling child from my youth, I approached this complete stranger, who, upon noticing my silhouette covering her small frame, immediately stopped playing what appeared to be a flute.
“Miss, forgive me for my intrusion, but the melody escaping your instrument told me to say hello.” I tried to make up for my foot’s folly with a little quick-witted charm. “Might you bless this lonely man with a conversation?”
Once the surprise wore off her face, which took less than five seconds, a rather sad smile possessed those pastel lips of hers. I was about to ask if I had offended her in some way, until she sat the flute down in the grass and reached into her small jacket pocket.
A well-used notepad now resided in her hands. It was a deep forest green with soft brown floral designs, a very subtle sort of beauty. Silently, my mysterious muse began flipping through used pages. What I caught looked like bits and pieces of one-way conversations in an abnormally graceful font. Was that her handwriting? My question was met with an echoing ‘yes’ as she removed her bland black pen from the spiral and put the tip to paper. She wrote in a manner most careful ‘I apologize sir, the only conversations I can offer spawn from this notepad. My name is Amber Sparrow, and I am mute.’
A mute songbird… What use is a mute songbird?
(To be Continued…)
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