The sparrows live in the wooden loft above our balcony,
where we stored packing boxes from the yesteryears;
from the time we first moved in, and dad made the loft in
the wall, painting it’s ply expanse white, like the insides
of our home. They’ve been tenants with us ever since or
perhaps, unaware of us, even before. They remind me of
cardboard houses and make-believe. I wonder how I’d
like the life of a sparrow on someone else’s balcony to the
life of the girl inside, watching out. To be sparrows in a
crumbling world, living in boxes of makeshift cardboard
homes, free from electricity bills and fiscal reports, crippling
economy and worst labour markets, expensive onions,
disappearing groceries, resurfacing haters, fascists,
deadlines, quarantine, a thousand words to write each night,
instead, a whole sky to own, to go where they wish, with a
place to come back to, living in strict sparrow terms, terms
of one’s own. They spend their summers in conversations
over our clothesline and remove in flights and silence, if I
approach to hang a towel, or join. I spend my summer inside,
spilling orange juice and making poetry from words that are
still true to me. Their white-brown bodies watch, as I watch
them outside, stare down from the sanctuary of the loft, with
piercing brown specks of eyes, gauging strangers, strange
sounds, testing the air for flight. I wonder if I’d ever learn, to
gauge the leap before I fall or unknowing, discover how to fly.
If I lie in my bed for long, and the pain doesn’t subside, will I
hear them singing in Greek? If the earth comes to an end,
tomorrow, or perhaps, today, I wonder, will there still be,
sparrows singing in my loft, who were here before me?
