The image is this: a bird on a sidewalk.
It’s the most beautiful bird, and no one has seen it because it exists only in my mind. It is small — the size of a crabapple, maybe. Its eyes burn white-hot like every good set of eyes in books and movies. They burn so hot that looking at them burns the looker’s eyes in turn and damages their heart in time.
It’s the most beautiful bird. Its feathers are a range of oil paints: reds like cranberry bogs, floral violets, blues like midnight in a desert. Its legs are like bamboo, and its beak is the onyx of an alchemist’s lair. Its heart is made of flames.
The image is this: a bird on a sidewalk, trapped inside a glass cover — the top of a cake pedestal.
The most beautiful bird makes its own religion — there, in the skies. It does not pray and it does not kneel and it does not suffer. Its doctrine is informal, a few scrawled notes on the inner lining of its belly. Some days, a handful of faithful fly behind the bird as it whistles through the fog above them, and then they fall from the sky like little asteroids; they are blinded by the eyes of the most beautiful bird, who flew ahead and spun around to stare into and emancipate its followers.
The most beautiful bird can sing — oh, it can sing. It’s a rise and fall like wind, a low pitch like thunder but with exacting rhythm. It flaunts its feathers with an allowed arrogance, because the bird can really sing. It sings even when it is trapped beneath the glass cover of a cake pedestal, and the glass rings through the earth like a set of bells.
The image is this: a bird on a sidewalk, trapped inside a glass cover — the top of a cake pedestal.
The most beautiful bird begins to lose it. It bends its little bamboo legs and thrusts upward, tries to escape. Bang, bang against the glass and it shifts a little but that’s all. Because its colors are like oil, they start to rub off and the inside of the glass starts to stain with the colors of the bird. Bang, bang as the bird tries to escape. Birds are supposed to fly. It sings loudly and all the earth beyond the sidewalk can hear thunder in the ground, but nothing: the bird is still trapped.
The image is this: the glass cover of a cake pedestal shifting and scratching across a sidewalk, something inside trying desperately to get out. Whatever is inside is not visible; the glass is stained and opaque at best.
The image is this: the bird’s colors painting the inside of the glass — the top of a cake pedestal. Feathers falling out and the bird, ugly and naked, going hoarse.
And then salvation: the glass cover, the most beautiful stained glass cover, is lifted. The featherless, colorless bird has tucked into itself and shut its eyes. Salvation cups it in its hands, blows a cool breeze across its head, brushes its onyx beak.
The most beautiful bird coughs; several moths leave its belly and fly away. Its eyes open, and its eyes are new — still white, but they do not burn. Its heart is no longer made of flames; it is made of embers. New feathers sprout like grass from its skin.
Its song is a very typical chirping — less grand, more realistic.
The image, when you sort through the chaos, is this: a featherless bird, fragile, starting over again. No one has seen it because it existed only in mind. But now it is yours.
