i.

To the Lover, we’d appear as a bird: perched on peripheries, ephemeral and ageless.

ii.

The biomass of domesticated poultry is about three times that of wild birds [1]. The average bird, as the sum of its mass, has transitioned from embodying “delicate”, to “delicacy” and then, presently, “deli meat”; the metaphor became a resource, like the Moon did in 1969, or Rome in 410. The only way such a process can be reversed is through the loss of capability. If we can hold metaphors by their twiggy legs and pluck the feathers from their beating wings, we will.

[1] - https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506

iii.

The uncle and the young niece stepped along the sidewalk hand in hand. It was a brisk morning and the uncle had stopped by after being away for a year or so. He wanted to see her and the baby and to give his older brother a break while his wife was at work.

Unfamiliar with her walking companion, the niece was curt. They passed under a greening tree with four crows in it and the uncle noticed. The uncle heard the niece say, “I am bird”.

Being a watcher and scholar of birds, the uncle saw an opening. “You’re a crow?” he asked. No reply.

“You know, crows are very complex birds,” he continued, “they’ll remember your face.” Still no reply.

Uncomfortable with the silence, he pressed on. “There was an experiment where someone wore a mask and scared a group of crows” (here he felt that “murder” would be an awkward and inappropriate word to explain to her, especially so because she might start using it) “and after a few generations of the crow group had gone by, the masked person came back and the crows, who had never before seen the person, got very angry.” She was watching him talk.

“The crows must have told stories to their younger generations, like I’m doing now!”

“I’m bird!” he heard again. She hugged herself with a fierce squint and tucked chin. After a few moments, the uncle realized that she was really saying “brr-ed”.

“Let’s go back home,” he said, and they turned around.

On the way back, the uncle pondered over how unfortunate it must be to be a misinterpreted homophone, especially one so recently invented with onomatopoeia. He concluded that he never wanted to be one, and to ensure this, he must be a word unutterable by nature and language. The paradox of this notion came to him later in the day, and he thought to explain his conflict to the niece once she was older.