glass

That big empty house - I’m here again. And I’m sick again like I was then, too. I like it here, which isn’t saying much, because it’s very big and new and Designed. Something easy to like, luxury is.

I saw this article about how girls writing is Over, and I’m here to agree. Here’s my pen, or the fingers with which I type. Don’t think of me as a writer. – one of the worst things you can be I think is a diarist – I’m a sleuth. A reporter. A researcher. A smooth-talkin grease ball snake oil salesman. I have an agenda! Someone with a megaphone and thick-rimmed glasses with the horns on the corners. Thick horn-rimmed glasses. Horny thick-rimmed glasses. Rimmed-horn thick glasses. Thick glass-rimmed horns. That’s right. I’m a reporter with thick glass-rimmed horns. I see straight through those crooks, because I don’t need glasses. And I use my horns to interfere with radio signals, glass is one good conductor. Best I’ve ever seen, Choo chooooo. Once someone threw themselves onto the tracks and glass acted so quick, it pulled the levers and the pulleys and redirected the train to the other track just in time to save the guy. Unfortunately there was a nest of these ultra-rare, endangered finches on the other track. It was being preserved by some local organization that had taken a special interest in it, because this finch had laid a nest on one of these folks’ yard and she took it as a sign from God that this here was her purpose, to raise and protect this finch like it was her own human child. And then when she was having a party for the finch’s babies - they were about to leave the nest - an ecological person, some kind of scientist came and said to this woman: What a valiant effort you’ve made, you’re saving the species! And she said: What? These are just my babies. And the scientist said: Ah, so humble, so humble. And the woman let out a kind of giggle, and thought to herself: The species? God, you really did give me purpose. One greater than I could’ve imagined. And the man said: I’m apart of an ecological group with a special interest in birds. Would you mind if we paid you and your little miracles a visit, perhaps next week? And the woman turned to her birds, and they looked just like birds, but she saw in each of them a little sliver of God, and that sliver was bright bright light. And that light shined so beautifully and brightly that she thought, I would be a selfish woman to keep these bright lights, these gifts from God, all to myself. Sure! she said. Come next week. I’ll make a pie. And so the next week they same came and she made a cherry pie which some people said was a tad sweet for their taste but that didn’t matter much because they got to see this rare type of finch! a whole family of them at that. Well they got to talking and a man pointed out how, while such a valiant effort, perhaps the most! this spot was not the most ideal spot for these little hatchlings to be raised. A better spot would be on the other side of town, near the wetlands. A whole debate ensued over whether it was better to move the nest to an area where the birds would be better suited, or to not disturb them at all. The man who had raised the question was a proud and at-the-moment insecure man, having recently been left by his wife, the third to decide she could no longer live with him, unable to cope with his particularities and inability to talk about his feelings. So when most of his peers disagreed with his proposal to move the nest and not disturb the young ones, he was insulted, and grew even further adamant about the righteousness of his proposal. You have no idea what is best for these birds, he shouted. I studied environmental science at U, V, M. He pronounced each letter like a sentence, leaving pauses in-between. We relocated endangered species for breakfast, he spat. But few and fewer people agreed with him, seeing how his temperament had changed and not wanting to reward this kind of nasty behavior so unwelcome in their group. So the decision was made without him and he was left without a reason that satisfied him. That night he tossed and turned in that big bed of his, the one he had shared with wives 2 and 3 — the first wife had been the longest-kept, because they had loved each other in a way that was meant to last a lifetime. When things devolved between the two of them, he burned the bed they had shared for twenty years, it being too painful a memory and something that anchored him too deeply in the past. But yes he tossed and turned, so unhappy with how the day had gone, how the decision had been made, how unheard he felt, how without respect he apparently seemed to be. Three nights he slept like this, which is to say not at all, so that on the third he said, Enough! If it is keeping me up like this, the decision must have been wrong, and it is my duty to these little birds that they are put in a more proper place! So he went to the woman’s yard, where there were still remnants of the party she threw them, these pieces of pink streamer on the lawn, a stray party hat, and a piece of the banner she had made custom that read: Finch me, I must be dreaming! He rustled past all of these to find the birds asleep. Using the tools he brought, he carefully and tenderly extracted the nest from its place, and took it in his arms. He, too, while looking at these lovely little things, seemed to sense some kind of light, like they glowed and the glow came from their sleepy little chests as they moved, up and down. He sat there, still, just looking, and there he might’ve stayed until morning, his eyes a bit wet, thinking about the beauty of these little creatures and basking in their slight glow, but a dog started to bark, a light inside the house turned on, and so he had no choice but to scurry away back into the dull night. He got into his car, drove to the wetlands, and found a tree for the birds. He set them up there, and then drove home, quite satisfied with himself, where he fell into a deep sleep and awoke quite rested, to the sound of rain. The next day it rained all day to various degrees of intensity. At the man’s house, there were steady but light showers. Above the woman, there was a drizzle and a fog settled into her yard. In the wetlands, the showers were quite heavy, so heavy that the nest, which had been placed more precariously than the man realized, and atop the track which the man also hadn’t realized, him being all shaken up and after all half-asleep, well the rain was so heavy that the nest was knocked from its tree onto the tracks below it. So that two days later, glass struck this nest, killing all the finches it contained to avoid the man who threw himself in front of the train, which it conducted. And the man fell into alcoholism because of his guilt, and the woman gave up her faith seeing how it had all been for nothing, and that man who wanted to die became a cashier at his local grocery store.