A Pinker Sky for the Flightless Bird

              Soaring over the smoky chimneys, the birds conversed in a high-pitched chatter as they sang to the man marching below them. The click-clack of his heels rang through the air like sound waves as he, awkwardly, adjusted the hem of his blazer. Clouds hung about his eyes, blurring his vision as he stared at the skies with hair dampened against the nape of his neck. He flew amongst the clouds, noting the flutter of wings and beaks and feathers and things that made those creatures fly as if in a dream.

         But this dream was brief as a bell tore through his veins like a bullet, the limbs of children stiff and lifeless as they shoved and bustled through the halls. The walls of the little school were constantly dripping with the sweat from the tangled mass of bodies; the ambiance rank with the death of eloquence. They lacked the sophistication of a bird in flight; just as he, weighed down with soles of steel, lacked the method to rise. Stomping against the heaving concrete, he blazed towards the school with a common, if not renowned, distaste. He was not who he had wanted to be, too different from the man he knew on his summer home, surrounded by waves and gravel and wind and birds and seas upon seas upon seas! His heart was out there on the ocean floor, flying through the air embodying his lungs and curls while teasing his outstretched fingertips. Out of his element, dodging his endless animosities, he longed to dive into the seas above him.

         He was interrupted by what very well could have been a child, considering the locks of golden hair that splayed onto his chest with the collision. Looking down, he inhaled the scent of a schoolgirl’s ribbon of scarlet pink that rivaled a newborn rose in Spring and stopped, his senses jolting. He became infatuated, not with the girl, but with the smells wafting before his nose. It sounded like the ocean waves and smelled like the heart of the sea. It reminded him so fondly of home. Not noticing him, she waltzed away, her blonde curls spewing as she dodged the stranger in front of her, a lunchbox swaying by her side as a storm of paperclips christened the floor from her weeping jacket pocket. She fluttered away swinging her hips in some obscene manner as he smiled, grasping at memories he thought were lost forever. He looked around and saw the depths of the seas in the eyes of his men, the fury of storms in the passion of words, the crispness of life in each tooth of their smiles; and he knew he was never far from home.

         And he sighed, the hearty sigh of a content man, and walked up the slanted steps to the university, feeling as close with the ground and Earth as he had once been with the sky.