Bird Red Head Yellow Wings

(A very short story, inspired by the cover of A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch, and the name of the book's previous owner, written inside.)

No offence, but I don’t think we’d get on. I don’t know why I’m saying that (yes I do). You have nice handwriting and interesting taste in books. But there’s something about your name that makes me feel tense. It’s… teachery. Don’t get me wrong, I had some lovely teachers and actually, one of them had a name very similar to yours. But I’m sorry, the way you’ve written your name down, on that corner of the page, in pen, has irritated me and now I don’t think I like you. No offence.

 

The thing is, I suspect you’re the kind of person who would come in handy. You’re probably the kind of person who would come in handy quite a lot of the time. Case in point: I saw a dead bird today (I’ve realised that for someone who lives in a city I see a lot of dead animals, and I’m starting to wonder what this means, which I’m sure is the kind of self-absorbed, histrionic reflection you have absolutely no time for), but I didn’t know what kind of bird it was. When I got home, I looked it up on Google: bird red head yellow wings. A goldfinch. Of course. I knew that. But you would actually know that, wouldn’t you? ‘Ah, it’s a goldfinch’. That’s what you’d say, and the sentence would roll off your tongue with such ease, it would all come out as one word: ‘ahitsagoldfinch’. You’d stand there for a few seconds, very slightly bent over, with your hands behind your back.

 

I wonder if you’d be sad about seeing a dead goldfinch. Maybe one dead bird isn’t enough. Maybe seeing one dead bird would simply cause the corners of your mouth to drop down, quickly and sharply, for half a second and your eyebrows to be pulled in the opposite direction. Mouth-down-eyebrows-up. Like a movement from an army drill command. There’d be no change behind your eyes.

 

What would make you sad? What kind of dead thing would do it for you? What kind of dead thing in the street would sting you behind your eyes? A cat? A horse? A humpback whale?

 

A severed head.