On the Other Side of the Magpie

Sparrow The botanical garden in my neighborhood is free until April. A frigid Sunday morning and a bad NCIS episode later, we find ourselves walking through grass peeking through patches of melting snow, and the bare gnarled branches reach not for light, but warmth. My mother sits to rest and I can’t help but see the same patches of snow, as if melting through her hair, streaking past the past. And the past is here, I can see it in her eyes as she looks up to those same gnarled fingers reaching for warmth like her own. She has been complaining about the cold as of late. I can’t remember when she started aching and walking slowly, I can’t help it. I’ll pull a muscle now. We walk down the streets trying to buy soy milk and warm roasted sweet potatoes. I want to see what she sees in those trees that line the park. The bare trees with a sole bird perched atop. She mentions the bird to me. she wonders about it, not aloud, but I hear. The other birds fly about and flitter towards the ground in groups, playing, eating, living their small bird lives. I envy these birds that know more about her thoughts than I.