Can't Live if Living is Without You

 

The grey singing finch came to him. It perched on his arm and chirped a song for him. He fell in love with the song, ached for it, wanted to keep it for himself; so he took the finch home. The bird sat freely in the window and would wake him every morning with its golden sound.

 

A few months passed. Suddenly, he decided that he didn't like the bird in the window. Why is it always looking out of the window, he thought, does it want to leave me? So he put the songbird in a cage, shut the door on it, the key hanging on the side. The bird still sang for him, though, it missed the window and the freedom of being able to stretch its wings.

 

Soon its feathers became drab and sickly. It stopped singing. He didn't like that.

 

"What's the point of a bird that can't sing?" he threatened it with angry, cold, heavy words.

"You really are ugly, aren't you?" he teased, because of its feathers.

"Why don't you leave then?" he taunted it with the open cage door. The finch, scared and frightened,  sang once more. No longer the cheerful sounds of love, but cries of sorrow and longing. As long as the bird sang, he didn't care. The songbird started to hide in the dark corners of the cage, pressed into the icy bars, to seek comfort. He brought his friend to the house. The bird cried to him, asking for help from its cruel owner.

 

He didn't like that either.

 

"Don't ever sing for anyone but me," he said with quiet venom.

Then he bought a new bird, a vibrant blue budgie. She was prettier than the finch. But he still wanted the songbird to love him too. The constant pitiful cries of the finch made him angry.

 

He left, taking the budgie with him.

 

The grey bird sat lifeless for countless months. It waited for him to come back, filling the house with its lonely echoes. It was scared of being alone. His was the only love it had ever known.

 

One day he did return. But the bird was cold and limp, long since dead, its body lying in the open cage.