She Wished for a Field of Seagulls

Grace didn’t think much of it until the next day when she let Amelia toddle down the brick sidewalk and saw the scattered feathers, plumes of alabaster and storm, the length of an oyster shell, as frequent as blades among the grassy side-strip. Amelia, four now, had always been hyper-tactile–perhaps in that way that many children are–and drew the down to herself with a step, a stop, a bend, a pinch, a step, a stop, a bend, a pinch, one by one until she had a bouquet. 

Enough to make a flock, Grace said. Ever since Amelia arrived, she’d noticed this developing but not unwelcome habit of saying most of her thoughts aloud, but no one else seemed to pause and wonder at the feathers scattered like fallen leaves on that Thursday midmorning.

The connection from the night before came to her, slowly at first and then all at once: the back door open to the pitched evening, the shrieking that was part-caw, part-alarm, part-bleat, and then one pop, two pop, three pop, four.

A firework, she’d thought, though now her stomach turned and she moved toward Amelia, saying sweetie you need to put those back, thinking of how, when Amelia went to school, she’d do drills, waiting on that sound, and then Amelia, Amelia performed that step, the stop, the bend, the drop, just once, and did not rise. 

She sat there on her haunches, her hand grinding the quills into the dirt, and when Grace asked her, what are you doing love we need to go, she said, planting them so they can grow. 

Salena Casha‘s work has appeared in over 100 publications in the last decade. Her most recent work can be found on HAD, Wrong Turn Lit and The Colored Lens. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her substack at salenacasha.substack.com