Dear AnyOneGirl…

Dear Eve,

There are nightingales in my kitchen.

They grew from the glow of the stovetop at the start of September when the wind
picked up. Stems of smoke were rising from the glass boiler that squatted on the
mouth of a blue rose with flickering petals. I watched their feathers sprout from the
white-tongued flames and the heat burn their tails scarlet.

The birds make nests from the cutlery and sleep in corners of cupboards, even though
their wings have become blistered and their beaks burnt from pecking at the stove.
They spend all day stuffing their cheeks with glass strained sun and they only sing at
night.

Their songs bleach my dreams where I have red rubbed skin and hair that lashes wet
salt across my back. The sky is long and my shadow is tall. Old palm fronds have
peeled away from thin throats of the trees and they scatter like red velvet scarves
along the sand.

He sits next to me and together we watch the water hurl towards the shore. It is a
white afternoon. He is talking about Hurricane Season, how the wind sucks all the
rain and black sky into coarse lungs to heave harder and faster out at sea. That is why
the weather is so beautiful and the waves are so high. Hide it under your tongue, he
says. Remember what this day tastes like.

I wake up under a stale moon on the top of a steel skin building that was built for
clawing out stars. Inside, there are nightingales with their backs to the windows,
their hearts throbbing with the pulse of a hurricane somewhere far far away.

Love,

Amy

Writen by the lovely Amy Fraser of onislands