From “Sparrowmind” – unpublished short story

“We don’t often fly in rain,” the sparrow said.

I sat in the paved back yard under a burnished sky. The sparrow perched on the edge of a wooden planter box choked with dried stems. “It’s not raining,” I pointed out.

“Not yet. Soon.”

I imagined the droplets clinging to its wingtips, clouding the oildrop eyes. “You don’t like how it feels?” I asked.

“We love it,” the sparrow replied. “We love it too much. We know it’s wrong, but we love the feeling of the air between the droplets. It leads us up to a place where the wind is sharp and thin, and we are torn apart in ecstasy.”

“You’ve never done this?” I asked.

“Never,” it answered. “But I will, someday.”

“Then how do you know what you’ll feel? Maybe it’ll hurt, and you’re just imagining that you’ll like it.”

The sparrow shook its feathers into a loose mane. “We wait our entire lives to ascend,” it said. “Ecstasy is the end of waiting.”