It is Day Eight of the bluebird’s tap tap tap tapping at the sunroom window—the female with her dull blue feathers. The male oversees her nest building inside the box. Her wings brush the glass in frantic dance before falling to the ledge plastered with remnants of their meals.

“What is she after?” I ask my husband, who doesn’t hear; his headphones clapped to his ears for another podcast, another guitar lesson, another, another, another.

She’s fluttering, holding space as if she’s a hummingbird and only glass silences her cries.

“His attention is in all the wrong places,” I say as if speaking her mind.  

“What?” My husband presses a key on his laptop to pause his another. Slips off one side of his headphones. “Did you say something?”

“Nothing.”

He slips off the other side of his headphones reading more of me than I’d like and turns toward the window and the bird.

“She’s a strange little thing, isn’t she?”

I nod, nurse a thread in the seam of the old couch cover, and say nothing.

“It’s only two more days. You’ve made it this far,” he says.

“The waiting is killing me.” Wrap the thread around my finger, rip it clear off the couch, leave a tiny hole in the seam.

 “Two more days. C’mon, Grandma, the baby isn’t going anywhere. They’ll bring her soon.”

His fingers stroke the back of my neck, rub the shoulders grown weary with sharing space, and I lean into him.

 

Anne Anthony’s gritty, tender, and amusing stories feature compelling but slightly flawed characters who tend to carry on conversations with each other inside her head. A few years back, she stopped shushing them finally agreeing to tell their stories. Find recent publications here: https://linktr.ee/anchalastudio. Or check her social media: IG: @anchalastudio X: @DIHPocketsART FB: @anchalstudio