Mary Hockenbery (reddirtrose)
bird dance
When Sally was happy you’d find her on the floor surrounded by old photo albums, the ones they used to sell at the pharmacy. There must have been more than a dozen and she’d have them all open, then shoeboxes of loose pictures and the negatives as well. The shoebox pictures were always the best.
When she was sad, she’d bake, and the house would smell of frangipane, vanilla essence and caramel. She’d stand with a bowl in the crook of one arm and a wooden spoon in her other hand, unable to wipe the tears that spilled all over her face. She sobbed and never spoke, we never knew why she was crying.
Her angry days were the best. On angry days Sally would do the bird dance. She would put on her crinkled daffodil wings and swoop out into the back yard. There might have been winter snow and ice, or neighbours watching, but Sally didn’t care. The bird mask hid her face, but the fury in her eyes burned through, and she would shriek like a phoenix turning to ash, like a chicken protecting her brood. She would pick up potatoes and hurl them into pulp against the fence; her beak thwacking against her chest. No one really took her anger seriously, but it made her feel much better.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, Rachel Irving and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
