Wings

Flash Fiction

The bird noticed Daniella first, she would swear it. A scarlet macaw at the clay lick by the river.

She laughed at herself, wading topless on a gorgeous day in Panama, that the first eyes she felt on her were a bird’s. He stared at her, his head twisting. She looked back and smiled at him. He honked.

Daniella told Ivan, and he laughed too.

The next day the bird was out there again. She noticed a foreshortened wing, and of course she did. The modeling agencies had been less than kind to her about the hitch in her gait. 

She begged to bring the macaw home to New York.

Ivan laughed again, but she was serious. 

“You cannot bring a bird home from the wild, sweet Yella”, Ivan said, in that patronizing and paternal tone, reminding her she had married a man far her senior.

“That’s what you did, Ivan. You found a lame creature sobbing on the wild streets of New York, and took it in.”

Ivan laughed again, not a laugh of mirth, the laugh of a conqueror. 

They would return to the villa the next year, and within hours Daniella found the macaw. 

She was not an idiot. She knew the macaw must be attracted to her shiny jewelry or her perfume, but why the one with the shortened wing? Did he see her odd gait in the river? 

That’s silly, Yella, she told herself. But you’re allowed to be silly sometimes. And if the bird cannot come home with you…

“I will buy you a bird, Daniella,” Ivan said. “Identical to that one.”

Before he had finished talking, she was shaking her head.

“I will stay with this one,” she said, “there is no need for any more captive birds.”

***

Photo by Zachary Spears on Unsplash