Songbird

You’re walking down a forested street that runs along the bluffs overlooking town. Enclosed in an envelope of cedars and pines, you enter the grove in which Elijah’s grandmother’s house sits and are overcome with the feeling of stepping sixty years back into history. The gravel path leading to the front door is spotted with dandelions and daisies peeking out from in between the pebbles. Near the front door are a pair of mud-splattered rain boots, men’s size eight, and a carefully-adhered patch of duct tape covers a hole in the side of the left boot where the rubber has cracked. The house itself--a sturdy A-frame--may have looked cheerful once, but the paint on the shutters is peeling now and the structure has lost some of its friendly appearance over the years.

 

If you were to enter the home, you would find yourself in a room that serves as a kitchen and a dining room. Off to your left, through an open doorway, there is a living room with a floral sofa and a few scattered, mismatched chairs. Above the living room window hangs a brass cross, a single dry, golden brown palm leaf tucked carefully behind it. Two doors towards the back of the house lead to a bedroom with a large bed covered with a patchwork quilt. The room is so small and the bed so large in comparison that you’d wonder how it was brought into the room in the first place. The other door leads to a tiny bathroom--the countertop near the sink is clear except for a bottle of hand soap. In fact, the entire house is tidy and neat, and quite empty. You would likely come to the conclusion that whoever lives here is not home often.

 

There is one final room, just up the staircase, a room so narrow that calling it a room in the first place feels a bit generous. A twin bed is tucked perfectly against the back wall, under a window in the peak of the house’s roof. Other than the bed, the room is bare of furniture, but the slanted ceilings of the room are plastered with posters from years before the room’s current inhabitant came