a forgotten melody.
THE NIGHTINGALE POURS ITS heart into the simple melody, trickling into the small room through the open window, filling ever corner of the sparsely populated room with its song. The girl listens, as she listens every night, and imagines that the bird must love the stars very much to herald their coming with such a beautiful tune night after night after night. And she is grateful, as she is grateful every night, that there is a branch right outside her window, so that she can sit in her little, rundown chair, at her little, rundown dresser, leaning against the wood in her little, rundown nightie and hear that bird sing its ‘hellos’.
Her chin rests upon her folded arms, which rest upon the edge of the aforementioned dresser, and she stares intently at one particular picture. It’s the same picture that she stares at almost every night. Most of the other frames are filled with snapshots of her, and she sometimes looks at those, but they never hold her attention for long. This one, however, is different. She’s still in it, of course, as she’s in all of them. But there’s someone else peeking out from under this frame, too. A woman. With kind eyes and a sad smile. Whose hair is a coppery red and whose face looks worn but she wears it well.
This time of night, when the sun is striving to stay aloft and the darkness is closing in, always seems to be the best time to stare at this picture. This time of night is the time of night when memories play tricks, and she can pretend that she remembers this woman and the way she smells and the way she speaks and the way she says her daughter’s name. This is the time of night when stories are told, when women who say their daughters’ names kiss those same daughters on the forehead and pull blankets up under those daughters’ chins.
The girl is young, but she knows that this, the way she sits here night after night, all alone, isn’t right. Even an infantile mind, perhaps only an infantile mind, can know when something’s been cruelly stolen. The stories of her mother have been stolen. And she does not know how to get them back.
Thin fingers and too thin arms reach out to grab the picture, and she toddles over to the window, lank coppery curls falling into her vision, and stares out at the night sky. Stars are appearing, and the nightingale is still singing. It’s only a moment or so before she finds what she had come to the window to search for. The moon glows in a cold sort of way, but that doesn’t deter the girl from voicing her complaint and her petition.
She complains about the lack of stories. And about the lack of a mother. And, after some thought, she complains about the lack of a father, too, but, since she doesn’t even have an inkling of what he looks like, she doesn’t truly know what she’s missing. Then she begins her petition. She asks the moon, if the moon would be so kind, to find the woman in the picture. And, once she is found, tell that woman that her daughter would like to see her, because she’s ever so curious to see if she’s anything at all like she’s imagined her to be. And she’d like a story. And a kiss.
