Little Bird
I watch through my window, two little girls in their school uniforms walk through the drizzling rain. They're definitely late—it's almost 8 AM and it looks like they're now on their way to school. Did they oversleep? Did they have chores to do? They're both wearing pullovers.
It is the rainy season south of the Sahara, within its tropics. The rainy season is wet. The rainy season gets cold. I used to dress the same way for years ago, for this weather. Years of winter, and now this weather they call cold, I call perfect. Not too hot. Not dry. Though the mosquitoes are always collateral damage of this weather, this weather… I call perfect.
It's so bizarre to think that now I am the adult looking at the kids go to school. I am still in school. It is different, though. I do not have to wear a uniform. I do not have to cut my hair, though I have. I do not have to wear black or brown shoes with white socks. I do not have to have my clothes ironed without a crease. I do not have to have a handkerchief ready in my pocket for inspection. "School girl" is not my primary weekday identity.
I am aged. I am not an adult. I refuse to be caught in that façade.
The girls turn a corner, they disappear behind a building. My eyes move to the next thing my brain registers. My ears heard it first. The chirping.
I notice, for the umpteenth time, my neighbor's mango tree. Is it a mango tree? I think it might actually be neem. The leaves are somewhat slender. And it is mango season, and if it were a mango tree, should mangos—fruits bright and yellow, popping through the green—not be seen? Or maybe it is a late-blooming mango tree.
Hey there. Hey. Why are you standing on the electrical wire? Are you not scared to be hurt? The rain is coming down. Why are you still there? So free. Fly… find some shade. Does the rain not bother you? Does the rain not unsettle you the way it seems to unsettle most of us? The best of us?
Am I assuming you want freedom? Because I want to be free. What do you pay to be in an open space? I may pay 5000 cedis to stand by the water for four days. I pay 3500 cedis to stand behind a barricade.
Yet, I think perhaps you are safer than I am. And I am paying for my safety…
Little bird.
