Little Bird by Unity

                DieselDemon CC



Little Bird

​   There sits at the base of the Goldman Sachs building in New York City a line of dead finches. “They keep the glass so clean, the birds just fly right into it,” the doorman says as I crouch before one of the birds, scooping it into cupped hands. “That’s bad,” I say, stroking its feathers. 
   I. A. Richards wrote that metaphor is a “transaction between contexts” we conduct through language. I wonder what you would have said about that. You always hated metaphor. “You should say what you mean,” you said, and I understand this in a way. Life would be simpler if meaning stood still. If our contexts aligned with only themselves, providing no gaps for the pain to slip in.
   I sit with my bird and I think about you, Clutch. Once you were a bird, and I was a shimmering pane of glass. “You have lost touch with all reality,” you said from the ground where you landed. You were right when you said that. But wrong about metaphor.
   The bird in my hand comes alive, a miracle. It spreads its small wings and flies away.

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Unity is a writer and troubadour from upstate New York. His alter ego, Miss Unity, is the world's greatest permanently institutionalized Lana Del Rey impersonator. The two Unitys can be found on Twitter and Instagram: @doyoumissunity

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