17th Day - Jonathan
Reading time: 3 min
Photo by Muhammad Murtaza Ghani on Unsplash
It all begun when he brought me into the bedroom. I was having a hard time adapting to the new temperature, so cold, but in the cage I couldn’t fly for long enough to warm myself up. He came to me and asked if I was alright.
“Jonathan,” I replied, being it the only word I knew.
His wife wasn’t happy with the decision.
“It’s weird being watched by a bird,” she said, but he wouldn’t listen. He’d put my cage next to the bed, and after she refused to do whatever they were supposed to do, he covered the cage with a big towel.
“I’m sorry buddy,” he said.
“Jonathan,” I said, and I was sure he understood me.
With time, I stayed in the bedroom more and more, and got covered less and less. One day, I saw her entering the bedroom with someone I didn’t know, which scared me so much I had to scream with all my might.
“Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan!” I cried for help.
“Is Jonathan your husband?” the man asked.
“No,” she said, then grabbed my cage and closed me in the closet’s darkness.
When he came back later that night, I was still in there. I heard him saying: “Where’s Jonathan?” And she replied: “He’s not Jonathan. He’s a parrot, for Christ’s Sake.”
That evening, after she went to bed, he carried my cage into the garden and opened it. He kissed me on my beak and told me to fly away, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. He was weeping, and I wanted to comfort him. He kept me alive all this time.
“You know what you want, don’t you?” he asked.
“Jonathan.”
“And you’re not going to compromise, are you? You’re not going to do what you’re told.”
“Jonathan.”
“You know, you’re just like him. I miss him so much.”
I flew over his shoulder and rubbed my head on his cheek. “Jonathan,” I said, and I immediately realised that was the word he needed to hear the most.
When she woke up the following day, he had been waiting for her at the kitchen table, with a bag full of clothes and my cage on his side.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I’m leaving. Forever. You can stay here for another month, but the house is up for sale. Eventually, you’ll have to find another place.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You won’t accept that Jonathan is part of my life.”
“That’s not Jonathan! That’s a fucking bird!”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re crazy. You’ve gone insane after he died. Do you expect me to just let you go?”
“What else can you do?”
She screamed like a wounded animal, then grabbed a knife. She stabbed him, many times, and I was powerless, watching from my cage, trying to break free to help him while failing miserably over and over.
With hands drenched in his blood, she opened the oven and threw me in there, and the last thing I saw before my feathers started burning was his chest settling down once and for all.
