This aviary, the only home I know
I don't remember much. What I am certain of is that there was a bird confined to the walls of your study, facing the ground.I have a clear memory of asking whether it was falling or descending, taking the food to its young ones. You were impatient, so the answer was brief: the bird had no family. It was simply a drawing my mother had done as a child, out of boredom. I couldn't bring myself to sit behind the wheel, but once the car went up the driveway I knew that sitting in the back was the proper way to approach this household. I was becoming smaller. 
The woods can be forgiving, you said, but I have never seen your rose bushes this tired. New owners told me they would keep them. Trying to be as considerate as I could, I ordered: "Cut the flowers, they are dangerous." And I do remember the door handles, the cold water running through the pipes and ending up on my hands, how it took me an eternity to reach the fence, sledding. I touch the shiny red metal handles as they become strawberries, vibrant like the blood from my tiny fingertips yearning for your prickly blooming buds.What is this bird? I still cannot tell. A young magpie? A corvid? Or a gentler creature, a skylark? I wonder if it knows that it was me staring at it with these same gestures, prepared to follow it.
I carry your neatly ironed shirts to keep me warm. Mother's old dresses fit me, which comes as a surprise. The grounds seem much smaller so I walk from one end to the other, performing a full rectangle through mud and grass. I make a move across the hazy window glass and the bird is out in the open. It finally flies as the car advances towards the city. "Slow down", I whisper. The bird should take a close look at what it is leaving behind.The driver nods and I wonder if he is as hungry as I am. How would you even know that mother was bored as a girl? You met her decades after she had decided to leave this place. You shouldn’t have been the one to propose coming back. written by Maša Seničić 
