No Birds Sing: Prologue – David Hay

December 21, 2022

Shards of light, flash in and out of existence, resting on the pebbles, on the ripples of water, as the wind blows the tree branches laden with leaves from side to side.  He is alone, as he always pictured himself to be – alone in the light, in the dark, next to the river that drowned each thought. The sun was slowly falling below the horizon. The night was slowly consuming the day. Every muscle, every hair, and every breath taken, seemed to him, to be one with the arch of the heavens above and the dirt below. There was nothing he saw now that was unremarkable. He was lost in reverie. 

He rolled then lit a cigarette. The smoke briefly clouded the few stars in the sky. So many things had happened, and so few of them were worth telling. His childhood years were on the precipice of silence. Those who had held those years together were gone. If not now, there would be no when. 

Lie down and rest your head on the grass. Memories are no more accurate than dreams. We are all going to die. Write, read and fend off forgetting for an instance.

To the boy who I drowned in me long ago, I’m trying to give you back your voice, though the tone is now lost. 

 

To my grandparents I give you my last memories, dreams and what’s left of your mythology.

 

To my parents and everyone else whose stories are fiction encircling the core of my grandparent’s lives, these are not representative of you – these are shadows, extracted from the mines of my limited imagination. 

This fiction. This fact.