Bird Sounds
by Lilly Posnett
They were kept there for a while.
We lived nearby. The noise was constant. The smell, unbearable.
On the third day, we had to close the windows and sweat in the July apartment.
I was cupping water in my hand, letting it slip over my daughter’s shoulders as she sat in the bath, when she turned to face me.
“Remember,” she said, “when I found the baby birds?”
Later, I realised what had happened; she’d turned the noise into screeching, hungry hatchlings and the velodrome into a giant nest.
I was glad she remembered the birds.
She was only young.
When the time came to open the windows again, one of them would not budge.
It was fixed shut. Like our mouths around the memory.
Lilly Posnett has recently completed an MPhil in Children’s Literature at Cambridge University. Her work has appeared in The Mays Anthology and been performed at The Corpus Playroom. She placed third in the Louis de Bernieres Fiction Prize 2018 (run through Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education).
Photograph by easterstockphotos via freeimageslive.co.uk (CC BY 3.0).