[Little Birds] A short story

 




  To the very delight and premature expectations of new neighbors, Colette was an old soul, not
acquainted with the obsequious rubbish of the modern generation. Only Alumni of Northwestern for
about a week, her decision to remain near her alma mater was in direct result of the family she acquire
throughout the years. She had come from the desolate town of Juno- a few shambled blocks in the
midst of the west Texas desert, situated between 1930's-circa-possibility and oblivion, and once she
made it out, she vowed never to return. Within her 17 years of knowing nothing but, she'd lost her
abusive dad, opiate-addicted mother and two younger brothers; there had to be more to life than death
and desolation.And there was.

   This world that she imagined, this world that she envisioned and wanted to live, she found within old
books, inside of a small, defunct library near the outskirts of Juno. The smell of musk and leather
interwove with the heat that seared the binds of outdated books, dust hid the covers and at times she
had to wipe it away to see the author. Inside of these covers were stories that touched her heart, made
her cry, made her smile, taught her to relinquish clichés and to become a thinker. She discovered truth
from reading multiple opinions and made her mind up on how history played out, or how it could.
Sending nearly every day in that small library ensured her freedom, a place to run away every day and a
Valedictorian spot amongst her contemporaries, the spot that paved her path into Northwestern, far
from those sandy roads and the little birds that she always watched out the windows and imagined their
destinations.

   Colette pursued literature as her major, the understudy that put the pupil under the sweetest duress;
being overwhelmed with the words of dead novelist gave focus and purpose to many, but for Colette, it
was life given-a-many-a-times. Instead of 5,000 words, she wrote 15,000, 3-5 pages in MLA format
became 10-15; her disquisition was 1,000 pages on the contrast of modern literature versus that of the
19th century. Even in her rare down time, she'd write unassigned essays and critiques, which made her
a big hit and secured her a position on staff beneath her own Comparative Lit Professor upon
graduation. By her junior year, it was common to see her lunching with the Dean, discussing Chopin and
Wilde. It wasn't her fierce intellect or her drive that was admired amongst the offspring of the
bourgeois; it was what she came from, the gutters, the lows and rose from such obscurity. She came
from the vileness portrayed in the horror stories of Capote, of Joyce, Faulkner, Miller, Bukowski, Celine
and Fante- many aspiring novelist on campus may write of hunger but Colette was the only one to everexperience it firsthand. Such stories told were published in the campus paper, making her the
fascination and marvel, the laureate of southern lowlife, the motif of where dreams can lead.
Colette was little known outside of the campus of where she was popular but with solidarity and
kindness, her neighbors became fond on her alien appearance and began to warm up to her. Everything
she stood for, everything she accomplished because of those beliefs was well admired and it was rare
for a full day to pass without one or multiple neighbors to visit with tea, coffee, truffles, biscuits or other
refreshments in company. She was an avid storyteller and even without embellishment, she captivated
the surrounding observers and fans as though she was the first lady to cross an undocumented,
uncharted continent and returned unscathed with the maps and proof of lost cities that were once
englobed in myth. How could someone who seemed so frail, so petite, walk barefoot on the burning
asphalt during a sandstorm, walk in to see her beloved mother lifeless with a needle hanging from her
vein, in the same home where her only siblings died in their sleeps before the age of 1?

   There was nothing taboo about the human condition to Colette, even when it seemed so on those days
where she would regress back to that old library with the cracking bonds and dusted covers, an empty
stomach and not a dime in her pocket. A library card ensured she could take back to that double-wide
trailer 3 miles walk from the sanctuary, whatever life she decided to dissect. Losing oneself to find
oneself is necessary to restore the confidence and want of continuum and if she learned anything from
the many books she read, was that the conflict with home was present in all the lives of past artistoriginating
from doesn't oblige reconciliation nor return. That small town between nothing and less gave
her the hope to want, the hope to escape the ashes of her lineage, bury once and for all those skeletons
and the fear of what awaited outside of those city limits. The survival of childhood grants a writer stories
to tell for lifetimes to come and satisfies that frantic need place inside of them from those origins to find
that road from sufferer to artist, artist to the triumph over art. So she lifted herself with the graceful of
flight and caught the wayward wind, as those little birds that gave her wonder as to what was out thereand
now, in flight, she would drift on the accidental breeze until such a time she would find happiness.

-from [The Paper Womb]

Dontrell Lovet't