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Leonard was a scholar. While the other birds were playing, diving and flying around, he was sneaking into the open window of the local library, where he could read in private, closed off from the noise and distractions of daily life. He wanted to be a professor, like the ones he saw teaching at the college down the street but he knew that no one would understand what he was saying. His girlfriend, Pam, said that he had dreams that couldn’t possibly come true but when he was asleep, dreaming, he saw himself standing in front of a class, telling his students about the view of the world from above. He would tell them about Shakespeare and Voltaire, about Van Gogh and Keith Harding. He wanted everyone to know that Shakespeare’s sister was the actual author and that her brother, William, simply took credit for her words. He wanted to expound on the colors of Gauguin’s islands, the meanings of Virginia Woolf’s, Yellow Wallpaper. He so badly wanted to discuss the Wright Brothers and the structure of wings. But how could he? He tried to sleep when he could, so that he could go back to his dreams and think about Josephine Baker and Jazz. Of Zelda and Scott. He wanted to show that Hemingway lied about everything he did, just to make himself look good. He stole the stories of others and acted as if they were his own. He wanted to talk about fish and what it was like to live in the ocean. What it was like to live in the air. But he was a bird and humans didn’t listen to birds. They didn’t listen to anyone but themselves which only led to war and destruction of habitat, theirs and every one else’s. If he could just explain things, maybe they would understand.
“You’re doing it again,” sighed Pam, staring at him. “You’re thinning about talking to the humans.”
Leonard looked away.
“It’s not possible, my love. It can’t be done.”
“I know,” said Leonard. “I just keep hoping.”
“There is no hope.”
“I know.”
“Will you tell me about the poets?”
“I will,”said Leonard, perking up. “Which ones?”
“I will leave that up to you.”
“Thank you,” he said.
So, Leonard and Pam spent the day, sitting in a lovely tree that reached out over the ocean, while he recited love poems to his heart’s content. Pam kept falling in love with him again and again.
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Written
on December 31, 2015