The Bird

The young man and his girlfriend were returning to their hostel. It was late, the road was deserted and the street-lights were off. In the eerie light of the near-full-moon, followed by creepy shadows, the couple walked close, grazing but not touching or holding.

They heard a baby sparrow’s weak tweets. It took them ten minutes of frantic searching in the dark to find the little bird. She watched him pick up the bird carefully, cradling it in his palms, cooing, caressing.

‘My little baby…’ one crooned.

‘Our baby bird…’ the other corrected.

In his hostel-room, they made a soft nest and placed the baby bird in that cradle. He watched her feed milk, with a syringe, to the little one, drop by drop, her light soft hair falling forward, her lips pouting and wet, humming a lullaby. She looked up at him and smiled. She liked the way he watched over them. They felt secure.

He leaned forward and kissed the bird’s tiny head.

She too kissed the same spot.

A week or two went by, days full of such lovely private moments. Then, it was time to let the baby sparrow fly away. That same week, she went on a date with a senior colleague.

He thought about the bird. Maybe, it died in the wild, like their affair. Or, it survived, flying freely, uncaring, like her. He felt poetic, heroic, thinking like that.

‘Next time, I will kiss the girl, not the bird,’ he decided.