There's a bird that recently started to visit my window everyday, I think more than a week now.
It's not a grand bird, not the kind you’ll find in a glossy wildlife magazine. Just a small one, brown feathered, almost invisible at the wild and yet here at my window, it feels like a soft kind of miracle to me
This bird comes alone everyday to my window 🪟, usually in the mornings, and when it does, it doesn't just sit there basking in the sun or chirping a song. It pecks. It taps.
Sometimes it does it gently, sometimes faster as with a sense of urgency , like it sees something it mose reach. Then it stares at the glass like it's staring into a mystery it can't understand yet. And then again, it pecks, it taps.
The first day it was here, I was startled, I wondered what it wanted , and why this window, of all places it could go?
But after the subsequent and many other visits, I began to recognize and understand the pattern. The bird wast trying to come in, in fact today I tried to go close to the window to take a picture of it and apparently it felt something and flew away, but I hope it comes back. Also I know this bird isn't seeking food or shelter here.
I realized it’s seeing its own reflection!
And somehow the reflection has become her obsession. Maybe she thinks it's another bird, one that never responds to her but keeps mimicking and staring back at her. Maybe she thinks she found a rival, or a friend or something unreachable and sacred. I wouldn't know.
But in the daily tappings, I think I've started to see something of myself, and maybe it affects everyone.
We may all have mirrors that we keep coming back to. Memories we wish we could change, Ideas we can't shake,or people we wish we could reach, again or for the first time. So we keep on tapping on the glass, the glass of life and trying to understand our own reflection in the things we're chasing.
And this bird reminds me a lot of my childhood.
I remember growing up in a part of my country where no one really cared about nature or tiny creatures, kids often hunted these tiny creatures like birds and lizards.
The boys in the neighborhood, would chase birds down with stones and homemade slingshots. They always laughed at the fall of each one, they saw it as a game and that they're being victorious.
Well I didn’t think that was fun.
I think there was something cool about birds, something soft and free. Watching them glide across the sky, the freedom and all like they had no fear of the world.
The kids didn't see them that way. “Na just bird o, it no get sense.” they'd carelessly say! But I couldn't say anything them for fear of being the odd one out. I even remember a day when one of the boys gave me his slingshot to try to shoot a bird, lol I told him even if I tried I would never be able to catch one and then I left.
But I always felt something when a bird was shot down, like the sky lost a bit of its magic.
Maybe that is why this tiny one outside my window means more to me than I can tell.
It's still alive.
Still moving
And still trying to make sense of something it doesn't understand!
Just like me.
Sometimes I'm tempted to open the window, not in an attempt to let it in, but to gently hold it, calm it's wings and let it know it's ok, also to let her know there's no enemy on the other side of the glass, and that what she's chasing is only itself.
But I stop myself. I stop myself because I know that opening the window will only scare her away for good and I don't want that.
And sometimes love means letting something be even if it hurts a little and even if you never get hold of it.
The bird taping at the glass is a reflection, not just of itself but of who I used to be. That child who didn't understand why people do hurtful things just because they could, also that teenager who didn't fit in because of caring too much, and the adult who sees beauty in the smallest things.
So yes, I let the bird come and go. I let it peck and tap. And I let it leave.
And in that simple quiet cycle, I've found a kind of peace.
Sometimes some things are most beautiful when left untouched, just like birds at your window and I do hope my little friend keeps coming back!
Cover image generated using my prompt on Meta.ai
