Bird Girls Can Fly

It was a grey day, sort of monotone, with streaks of boredom across the sky. The slip of a girl with the dress that matched the blue above the clouds glared upwards – ‘Bird Girl’, the papers had said. A romanticism of reality she had thought.

It was happening again. The sky was getting darker, the abyss was spreading. The blood pounded in her ears and she bled. Her alabaster skin glistened with blood-mingled-sweat.

Let someone see, please, let some one see.

Sirens wailed, although they did not drown out the caws of agony from girl with the blue dress. A straggled crowd of onlookers stared from being the slide - to the left of the swing set, as she was lifted onto the stretcher. No one took the seat in the back of the ambulance; she was lifted alone – left – alone; always.

*

She knew she was giving him the same amount of attention that a stoned wombat would give to a tap dancing cigar, but she’d heard it all before. Even now as the consultant swam in and out of focus she could predict his words.

“We don’t know what’s causing it but with a few more tests will bring us a little closer”

Those two words ‘tests’, and ‘closer’; what did they mean? Maybe they where some strange euphemism for a pointless prick or an hour or so under aesthetic, bright lights, masks, prodding, probing.

*

It was an old woman who heard it- the baby - the one behind the bins, alone. Ruth was on her way out of the chippie when she noticed it. The dumpster casually pushed to one side, oozing its contents outwards, loomed above the cardboard box which was busy emitting wails that sounded sirens, loud ones, that shattered comprehensible thought.