WE WILL GET ETCHED INTO FOLKLORE OVER OUR DEATH.
Death will come as disease. Death might come as a whisper. Death will come in a dream. It will come singing; not in the destructive way imagined. But scrawling slowly in a lullaby. It will manifest itself in boredom. Forbidding of leisure. It will be in detention.There will be no grand ending. Defeated sighs will end the whole thing. Pitiful murmurs, barely audible. There will be no beautiful epilogue. None that you would remember anyway…
Bobby the bird came to visit Ronnie the rat. A monthly ritual. Pip the squirrel had a twin brother, Sleuthy the Squirrel. Sleuthy would slyly steal the nectar from the Hibiscus flowers in the garden. As soon as the flowers grew, he would greedily slurp up the sweet nectar. But he would have none of it all for himself. It was to be saved for Bobby’s monthly visits. The threesome would feast on a great meal of stolen nectar once a month. Bobby would break into stories about the sky.
The sky was temporary. The sky was free. It never remained still. It flowed like water. But you could never feel it. It could not be grasped. It was the great unknown. It was the changing of colors. It was the moving of winds. The shining of stars. Showing that which could never be seen. Forming that which was only known and felt, and yet did not seem to exist…
Bobby would sing sad songs. Today, Bobby didn’t seem to want to do that. He seemed rather happy. It was strange he said, not a single human was visible anywhere. Very few, if at all, moving here and there, afraid of even their own shadows. As if they were suddenly aware of their own whimpering worth in the bigger scheme of things. He was trying to sound objective but his voice gave away guilty pleasures of secret glee.
“Could you all hear the humming last night?” Bobby asked his friends. “When I am asleep on my branch at night, I can’t sleep for the sound is deafening”.
“Yes, Yes!” they replied.
“It sounds like lots of little voices…” added Sleuthy.
All were confused, all were curious, and all agreed to do something they had never done before…