DowntownRickyBrown
Up Close and Personal
She asks if they can live beside the water and feed leftover cracker crumbs to the birds every single day from now on for the rest of her life. It’s that sort of day. Birds scurry along the water’s edge, intent as detectives, darting forward to snatch a crumb, darting back again, wasting no time.
She bends at the waist, becomes a shorebird, darts back and forth. The wind is chilly and smells like old bait. She knows the answer will be no, she knows they can’t live forever by the water’s edge, but she asks anyway because maybe in some other universe where she becomes a shorebird the answer might be yes.
The fishing’s no good; it’s too windy and the fish are out of sorts. Only the shorebirds seem content. It’s time to pack up and go home. She asks if they can stay a little longer, and this time the answer is yes—yes, a little longer. The wind tastes like old wood. They stay a little longer, and a little longer than that. It’s that sort of day.
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