WHALE MUSIC — jailbird

^{Inhalations let the sparrows in; let the finches follow. Let the door's deadbolt loosen – let the door stand ajar and be let open to the night owls and morning larks. Let the doves alone to pirouette in pairs to the hymns of the hummingbird. Her lungs were a house and her heart of a home; wrens rested in the spare room, the terns painting portraits of high-society cardinals and bluejays until the breath becomes bearable, and the birds take flight from her lips.}

^{He spoke. Elegant and soft child like voice ensnaring hers in crustaceans traps. The tremendousness of his contrasted her’s, shivering golden threads of flowers stuck in hazy shoots to her throat; the break of her words was a trampled dirt trodden into her windpipe, a bloom growing frailer by the moment. The mighty bent her head, a lacquered hull of a ribcage descending, and a haunting, lung-dragon hoof sinking with one dull beat, a throb, into the drab dust.}

^{She'd watched him grow up until she didn’t, the sunsets crawling over his back like spiders invade damp bedclothes in dusty rooms, taught him to snarl back and wipe his scraped knees, after all. When he finally released, confessed, the curiosity of his father, the jackrabbit golden harking in her firmament eyes slept into a purple, ancient, primal darkness: the constant presence of absence is mute in the muffled air, lathering and wallowing in itself as a caustic hallow. Death sailed from another world, the sustained drone of bees past their prime and sluggish, yet with wings that cannot be stilled. Reindeer ears rose like comets shooting the urban grid; a beast who resided in an atrium of death might have been expected to tough it out, even smile wretchedly in the prosthetic face of it. Oh, she was a horrifying wilderness whose every haunting, jack-o-lantern iniquity was what made her alive (the igniting slingshot of teeth as she'd gape her jaws, begging disaster, and the demonic mantra of her eyes in the heat of battle, strumming and beating maddeningly to the life of the opposition), but she respected the sacredness of tears. Warm dew drops, collecting at the rip of her glasses of distilled water. Salty to the taste, as if scooped up from the depths of the equatorial ocean and dumped upon china plates sitting in neat rows on a shelf.}

^{Her throaty, big voice, dipped over him gently, a drape of a blanket wrapping warmth around him, comfort, “ We burried him unlike the traditional seems. We took his body into an apple crate, collected a well fitting lid, heavy enough to keep predators out, and then hid it within an abandon shed in the graveyard, “ somber and although she’d quite on the first word, raised her voice a few octaves when she’d remembered his hearing struggle, steadily and unfalteringly meeting his gaze, raising the altitude of hush with their darkened colour like a bleeding mesa; the lupines that dangled from her neck rumbled as pencil colored ears bucked to the open fields of the sky.}

^{She rose slowly, a horses movement as she took to her giant pedestal, and then gazed at her son, warmth, loving, sadness. She nearly choaked on the blue birds which burst from her open maw, eager to escape, to be free, and she rested her head on his shoulder, burying her head in his creamy paper colored pelt. “ Do you really want to? “}

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^{Frigid air whistled by, pushing up thick blue feathers, stems crushed as her paper crane neck rotated, beak opening to ensnare fish within its jaws. ‘What?’ She laughed softly, a gentle chuckle, bells ringing against the harsh of rain, a noise which created slender fingers to cup bluebonnets within and brush against their cheek. Such a soft melodic noise which carried itself over the hum of sadness. Funny was it how the noise managed to take over the bad. “ We placed him in a box. So that when we would like to see him once again we could do so. ” Her gaze thick and enamored, resting on the soft cream colored fur of her son. His body was something unlike another, she’d grown to love how soft and pure his whole was. And yet she’d noticed something, a tiny crack in his exterior which broke way to shattered glass, that crunches underpaw as he moved back slightly. She’d noticed such reaction as soon as he’d returned to her, it was something of fear. Not fear of her of course but fear of something else out of her own reach of her bird cage mind. Silverware, giant spoons of gray, dipped downwards to collect dust from the great oaks before feathery fork ends twitched. “ Ok. ” She spoke slowly voice dry and coated in deep emotion.“ Come. ” One word was all that was needed, but such word carried so much meaning it nearly burst and flooded her lungs, choking her words with liquid, like lemons, so sour and sickeningly sweet like a sucker punch to the gut.}

^{Giant gray hooves pounded lightly on the floor and nails clicked on wood like gentle taps of a pen on a desk. Turning around to face the deep cracked glass window she lept up on a small loveseat and then atop the window sill where there she took herself down a fire escape from second floor to first. Upon reaching the cold concrete floor, feathery dragons breath air creating bubbles which danced along the cool air current, she tilted her head upwards, big blue twin aquariums catching sight of the stark white pelt of her son. Awaiting him to join her she shook out her long pelt of blueberries and smiling encouragingly at him. She was going to stay by his side while he encountered his father, rest her love on him, a giant coat of care which would blanket him and create blossoming roses in his chest whichever would emerge from open maws, petals fluttering between teeth and lips beforehand escaping you the air.}

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