Flash Fiction

CHIRP

by Michelle Gilliam

(Jumping into the shoes I still don’t understand, but I try)

When the sky pales from black to gray, I hear the first chirp. I know it’s the first because my bedroom is in the corner of the house with two walls stretched full of windows.  He chirps alone in the dark, waking the others, much like my husband, first one to the party and the life of it.  My friends would say, he is such a good dancer or he is so much fun. But they didn’t have to live with him. Oh, but he’s so sexy, you get to go to bed with that every night, they added, but they didn’t have to live with him. Chirp, was hot but he couldn’t hold down a job either. He had nine careers in three years. I supported his search for himself as though we were on a scavenger hunt for the golden egg.

Chirp still talks. My ears are fully awake but I have yet to open my eyes. I do a body yawn. Does anyone else? I forget to ask people at parties. My whole body tightens up and I rub my right hand down my ribs into the dip of my waist and back up my hip that is bony the only time today. It looks like the magazines. Across my stomach I feel muscles contoured, it is the sexiest I will feel all day.

In that moment, I realize even Chirp is gone and the symphony outside my window I have heard everyday, isn’t there. But the day keeps coming anyway. It is winter. I will get to sleep in for a few months. I roll over to feel myself again. I press deeper into the bones, wanting to feel each rib. Wanting even pinched skin to disappear. I stretch my neck and feel my clavicle, my bony shoulder and stick my finger in the scar, a divot to remember. Up over the bones in my face, I feel me again and I open my eyes. Today, of course I can’t sleep in, Chirp fixed that. So, I decide to sit in the coming of day, and think about how long winter will be, and when they will sing outside my window again.