The Ones with Broken Wings

A fictional short story about a personal experience with a past love.

From an adult's point of view, I'm sure they have difficulty understanding how someone my age can fall in love hard enough to come out wounded. We are still children in their eyes, and they see us as incapable of experiencing true love. There are a lot of negative things we overhear about our ability and strength to become head-over-heels for someone when we're still at the beginning of our life's journey. Parents love to mumble about how we are to naive to understand. I don't need to hear the grumbles under my mother's breath to know that I've learned a lot about love. I know how to see it, and also feel it with every fiber of my being. 

I see myself as a bird-catcher.

I'm leaning against an open window, letting the cool, late-afternoon breeze lazily shift through my hair and billow into the room behind me. I have gifts sitting on the window's ledge: a bowl of handmade birdseed treats baked to perfection and a nest I had taken hours to mold with nature's abundance of leftovers. There is also another gift, but it does not rest on the ledge with the others. It is inside of me, patiently sleeping until someone comes along to awaken it.

Looking out into the yard, I see many, many birds. They are all different in ways that are visible and ways that are not. Some are quite handsome, adorned with vibrant, distracting colors that spread throughout each beautiful feather on their bodies. Some are more common, wearing dull, murky colors that don't attract the attention of my eyes as easily. Some are friendly, singing gorgeous songs that make me want to whistle back, and others are fighting over simple things, like sharing the same branch.

I notice a bird that is not amongst the bustle in the treetops, sitting on the ground. One of its wings is bent at an awkward angle, obviously broken. He calls to me from the yard, trying his hardest to catch my gaze as his light brown body hobbles through the freshly cut grass. Feeling compassionate towards this helpless creature, I dart from my room and go outside to retrieve him, bringing him back into the house with me.

Within days, I am helping him. I tend to his delicately wrapped wing whenever it needs my attention. He happily sleeps in the nest that I created and has finished off the bowl of food. I feel overjoyed that I am able to help him, and I appreciate his use of the things I had made, but my third gift is still dozing comfortably. I look out the open window at times, admiring the other birds that fly through the treetops.

Within weeks, the bones in his wing are healing, and I take him with me everywhere I go. We relish being in each other's company, each minute ticking by throughout every passing day. I start to feel the gift within me stir, stretching as it rouses itself from the depths of an evergrowing warmth. I seldomly glance out the window now, and I no longer keep it open. I have noticed his feathers aren't just brown, but a rich chocolate.

Within months, the bandages have fallen off. He flaps around every once in a while, but is noticeably sore once the day is over. I have shut my blinds, my attention solely focused on him. My gift has fully bloomed and is no longer hidden. It burns like a bright ember on a summer night, shining like a beacon just for him as it flickers with protective passion for the little bird I have fallen so deeply in love with. A few days longer and he is now flying independently, no longer needing my aid. I have reopened the window to give him the chance to fly outside whenever he wants. He doesn't wear out and soars as if the sky is his limit. Admiring the strength in him, I watch from my window sill, his shadow dancing across the ground from the dying light of the setting sun. Pride swells my heart twice its size. Once the moon has risen to take its position as guardian of the night, my bird returns inside and we rest for the night.

The next morning, I awaken from a heavenly sleep to find my room empty. He is gone. No gratitude for healing his broken wing or affection for spending every precious second loving him with all of my heart. Not even a feather to remind me he had even existed. I dash to the window, throwing it up as I frantically search for him in the treetops of the yard's oaks, but I do not see his familar face or the warm, luscious colors of his brown feathers. He is nowhere to be seen. My heart crackles into a thousand shards, shattering into fine dust. I spend the night crying heavy tears that match the dead weight of my heart.

This wound is fresh, still not a completely healed scar. I have never felt like such a jerk to my heart. I am not burdened by this chapter in my life, however. I no longer feel the ache in my gut as I catch glimpses of his belongings or spit venom at the memories and thoughts of him that drift by in my mind. Even if heartbreak is painful, I still do not believe that loving so young is ignorance.

At such an age, I believe that love is simply erasable.

I don't mean the kind of earsing that happens when someone pushes the erase key on their computer, deleting something as if it were never there, no trace of it even having been typed. I mean the kind that happens when someone makes a written mistake. That little rubber nub on the end of a pencil might be able to wipe away the majority of the lead, but there will always be an impression in the page, a dull trace of dust that shows there had, in fact, been something existing there.

There will always be that imprint on my heart, even if someone can't see it with their naked eye. I will always feel it, noticing its brand on the smooth but damaged paper of my life's story.

The name will never be forgotten, but it can be erasable.

Someday, a new name will belong in the blank labeled "this heart belongs to" and I will cherish its identity in my sloppy handwritting, running my finger over the deep impression.

Hoping it will never be erased.

Reviews

[phosparsec]

I think this is pretty good. Your diction is really nice. The use of analogy is enjoyable and for the most part well done. It seemed genuine and heartfelt, and I could feel it through the writing. The transition between the analogy to the next part where you speak of how you feel now could have been smoother, though. All in all, I enjoyed it.

[GordonBK]

Thank you, I'm grateful for your input and rating on this piece. It is a bit rusty with the transition, I agree, but I decided to keep it the way I had written it three years ago.

[phosparsec]

This was written three years ago? That's pretty cool, and I can understand that sentiment. It's good either way.

[GordonBK]

Yes, I wrote this my senior year of high school. Thank you, I appreciate your critque.