WHEN the baby is born, I’m watching birds.
Hummingbirds. I want to hear their wings, steady and quick,
like small hearts seen through such-thin skin.
Like the skin of onions,
the part you throw away
The baby has a hat, a wristband.
A number, not a name.
She
looks
like
you. But I could never tell you that.
I shouldn’t even write it.
This city is all glass and light. Makes birds lose their way,
go mad before this great big lake.
In the parkette on the corner, a baby bird fell from a tree.
Your father told me not to touch it. Said the mother would reject it
if it smelled like human hands.
I know you said you’d give her up—that’s always been the plan—
but all week on my midnight breaks, I’ve gone down to the NICU.
Her tiny hands
reach for me.
Your father was right, but I can’t forget how many feet stomped
around its whisper-small bones.
In the NICU after visiting hours, when the machines hum like frantic
wings, I press both hands to the glass.
That What I remember is its beak. How it opened so wide, I could see straight down its
baby throat. Even with its beak so wide, that bird was still too small to make a sound,
bird. the smallest sound my ears could hear
Kate Finegan lives in Toronto. She is editor-in-chief of Longleaf Review, novel/novella editor for Split/Lip Press, and author of the chapbooks Ablaze (Sonder Press, forthcoming) and The Size of Texas (Penrose Press, 2018). She is this year's winner of the Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction. You can find her at katefinegan.ink or on Twitter @kehfinegan.
© 2020 Kate Finegan. Published by LITTLE FICTION | BIG TRUTHS, May 2020.
Editors: Troy Palmer, Beth Gilstrap & Alvin Park. Images from The Noun Project (credit: Danil Polshin).
The 2020 Flash Issue:
