Mute | just a little longer
Margaret tried to hum a tune.
A bird landed on the windowsill. Margaret whispered a soft, hoarse hello and resists the urge to tap the glass. This was a little sparrow, maybe the first in his season. He is looking for a mate.
There was no immediate depth to the tune this little bird sung. The pacing was moderately lively and somewhat slow. She revelled in those notes, how they came not from the bottom of the throat but drew in and outward from the lungs and the belly. Singing was a matter of planting the right flowers at the right time, so that they were always in their best condition. But of course, flowers tend to have a mind of their own sometimes.
The sparrow hopped about, inspecting his stage. This was his debut: the little bird was in his best set of plumes. Delicately tailored and dew-kissed. Margaret lay her head down on the sun-drenched sill, eyes anticipating, heart quickening just a little.
Her thoughts drifted however briefly to her own stage. Her voice, that was slightly bitter and very indulgent. Despite her restraint, she began to trace small circles on the glazed wooden surface of the window frame, tapping the polished mahogany to a beat. That voice is gone. But just the thought of truely letting go: it was shattering, wretched, new. Her body is still her body, her eyes still see things and connect things and love things, and yes, they still shed tears. Her lips still move, and the sluggish morning air still ventures in and out from her chest.
She shifted her position a little, always keeping an eye on the gentleman sparrow. He had no trouble, surely. A bird is made to sing, she thought. They create songs with no beginning and no end, but a sound which spirals up and up and down and down and fast and slow and never quite stops at all.
And then she remembered her old piano, in the warm and soft-edged land that was childhood. It was a time when the world was always a little blurry, and a great many things made very little sense. That heavy piano — Yes, the notes were dreamy but still rung clear. How does a piano sing? Well, a piano has wires and little hammers and wooden contraptions inside. How does a piano sing?
Margaret tried to hum a tune; the notes that flew from her lips were pretty, in the same way a cracked riverbed was pretty. She stopped.
Outside, the sparrow stood very still. Is he about to sing? For a brief few moments their eyes met, and then the churchbells rang in the distance, and he fluttered off in a spiralling panic. Margaret sighed, and leaned back in her chair.
The therapist would be here in a moment: he always came after the first bells. She tipped her head backward and tried again, but the sounds which came were broken, sullen notes that fall to the ground with a thump, twitching and contorted things.
This was a horrible place to be, and she knew that over the next few weeks she would listen to these notes, sift through them, and reminisce at the ones she once sung.
Yes, her heart was an empty score. Driftwood, and bones, and waves rolled about between empty lines, hither and thither, clashing about.
