Fireside

FIRESIDE / Julia Wendell AU afternoon I listened to a fire, wondering how its poor song was expired, sounding like the long thin notes of a boy soprano, or like a bird, trapped in the great expanse between a cathedral's stained windows. So a bird sings in my fire, though its song has nothing to do with the numerous birds that have filled our lives, some made memorable in their own flight into darkness. Nothing to do with a boy who once trapped a sparrow, then lit a match to its wings to see if the bird could save itself. It is November, raining hard, and birds must find shelter somewhere. Mine has chosen a blue flame, though it has no recollection of matches or burnt wings, or of a small girl finding a few singed feathers and approaching her brother with his crime. No recollection of another mid-November, or of a brother leading a sister to their father's greenhouse to lay the small remains on a magnolia bush, then turning to each other in that steamy greenery, as he touches her plaid coat where the breasts should be, telling her, there is nothing to fear; that there are only a few small burns the purple flowers will heal, so come close and the bird will be gone. Come close and the bird will fly through the greenhouse window, to the poplar tree and live in the tree that is childhood, until one day she lures it out or burns it, quite unexpectedly, in a fire. 24 ¦ The Missouri Review ...