Honest

The realization was immediate. I had just walked into something that would meet me at an immense depth. There I stood, in the middle of the road, under the Middle Eastern sun in mid-summer. In front of me a sparrow lay calm on the pavement, it’s soft feathers bristling, much like the dry leaves of the tree it lay beneath. It was the other sparrow that had stopped me in my tracks. It had been standing by for a while now, squealing intermittently. What a painful sound it was. Do birds feel bereavement like we do, I wondered as I stood there, watching almost indecently, at a moment that belonged to them – just them and no one else in this world. And then this bird hopped to the one that lay still, plucked some feathers and flew away. Utility – dry as always but well, honest.