April 8: recipe for a nightmare

 Loosely followed Today’s Prompt. 

Happiness is a bag of bird feathers.

A Rough, uneven potluck of avian dressings.

We were told this by Wilbur Jennings at the Smithsonian. 

He was nearby, loudly jammering away about the corporeal nature of emotion in a deep vibrato, shaking the lesser exhibits.

I smelled his heart beat quickening. A hint of rotten eggs and fresh rubber as aftershave.

I am not aware if it will rain today.

Usually, I can taste it in the air. Today, however, I suppose it could go either way.

The bland cat of democracy will be upending some of the older exhibits in the other room, Added Jennings.

How could he be sure, our humble listener demanded.

The Lord will help us in our journeys, he said.

That’s a W! Shouted a less humble listener who decided to comment.

Jennings nodded with a blank stare.

Outside, I heard the inversion of sound that accompanies the departure of a thunder bolt. I looked out the window. Still no rain. Brutum Fulmen.

A security guard arrived and informed Jennings that the bag of feathers was a vector for Avian Flu.

Jennings, grew to full height and achieved a second head. He had finally revealed his true form: a taller, two-headed person with a very ripped neck hole at the demolished torso of his shirt. He grabbed his bag, howled like a madman, and emptied out the bag and a flock of doves triumphed and flew into the room. Behold, shouted the bag itself.

As the cooing, general confusion, and microbes of bird flu expelled themselves into existence, I saw our great nation, flag fluttering, standing up to the things it had previously shrunk from. Its sword took flight and sawwed a brilliant future for the rest of us. A sun bursting through the clouds and crashing down on the concrete all around us. And I would be lying if I said there was a dry eye in the whole room.

I would be telling you a lie if I said anyone understood it. But sometimes, at night, when I taste the rain and hear the thunder’s grown-man laments, sometimes, I think of Wilbur Jennings and know that catching bird flu and killing my wife’s prized parakeet in the process was a price worth paying. it made a life worth living. At the very least, my life is still classified as being lived. And so, I roll over and close my eyes again. 

Old wire hums electricity and the electric pole stands vigil, casting a shadow along the roadway well into the fading daylight.