*** I wrote this as an exercise for my Instance of Death piece.... and I kinda don't like this piece but I wrote it in 30 minutes. The goal of this exercise was to use a metaphor.
A cuckoo bird sings songs in its nest alone. I hear my sister crying behind closed doors across the hall, and her cries mix with my mother’s who is in the room further down the very same hall. Everyone’s trapped inside their own little sanctuary and tends to their own needs. I’m not crying, I’m texting friends and asking how their days are. My father’s death seemed to affect everyone but myself. As the youngest child of the family, I expect to outlive everyone in this house and we’re already down to three rather than four, it’s a matter of time until the race ends and I come out as the sole victor of a game I was born into. And yet, as I ask my friends how they are, they do not ask me how I am, and for some reason that makes me feel lonelier than ever. I practice writing that my father died on a nearby notebook, and typing obviously takes less effort than writing but for some reason, I can’t tap onto the keys that’ll spell out my most recent obstacle in life. If anything, I’m passing by this obstacle course with flying colors but I find myself reminiscing and thinking about each situation even though it’s been a long time since I’ve overcome them. Fighting my father over menial things, speaking respectfully with him, making jokes so that I can avoid another fight, holding his hand when his own mother died and finding myself crying for him when I could tell he couldn’t bring himself to cry in front of his family… The cuckoo bird sings but for some reason, it feels bad for the broken eggs on the ground below her. If I died tomorrow and threw the race off its natural course, I wonder if my mother and sister will cry the same way they are for my father right now. I’m younger, so they don’t have as many memories or history with me but I imagine they’d do the same and then my sister will hug my mother while telling her about how no parent should outlive their child. I’d never cheat like that, but I think about it sometimes since all I do is take, perhaps if I bring down the numbers of the race it’ll make it a bit easier for them to run faster and harder. In all honesty, I’m afraid of the consequences and that’s the only reason why I don’t cheat in life. Some nights when I’m intoxicated it isn’t as scary, but it seems like each time I’m about to jump off the nest and fly my mother and sister hold me back and remind me that they don’t play the games I do. I’m doing fine. I think I’m doing fine. It’s easier to play games if you don’t think too much about them. I think this and so I must believe it, but guilt makes me drag my feet across the floorboard and visit each broken eggshell and try to put them back together so that maybe they’ll sing songs with me. The first eggshell was pretty easy since it does not know how it fell from the nest, and my sister smiles at me weakly saying that she’s glad I came to check up on her. The second egg is already broken and the baby bird has been dried up and burnt by the sun to the point where it’s ashes so I fly to the last egg and it’s the hardest because this bird has the same lips and eyes as me but instead it uses those features to cry and hide herself from the world. I don’t want to hug my mother but she breaks my rules and latches onto me like I’m her savior and does not believe I am her killer. I took away her chances in a proper workplace and a proper life, but for some reason. she lives her days as if it is proper for her. It confuses me and makes me sad, so now we are both crying as we hold onto each other.
“You’re very important to me I hope you know that.” She tells me. I haven’t heard her say this before since she always expects me to know that I am loved and that I am important, or at least that’s what she said before my father died when I asked her about who I am to her. For some reason, this hurts more than it should. The cuckoo bird sings songs in the nest it stole, but from afar it’s family sings back to it.
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