Birdy

flew with me to the top of the cage and made me look down at the bottom. I had no fear of flying at all. I felt like a bird. I felt I couldn’t be hurt by falling. Going up was harder, took a little more effort, than going down; that was all.
    I looked through the cage to the outside. I saw the houses and knew what they were. I could see the wall and the gate and knew what they were for and what was behind them. I remembered all the spaces around that I couldn’t see. I knew all kinds of things a bird couldn’t know. I looked out at the trees in the yard and wished I were flying there.
    In my dream, in the cage, I learned to fly the way I’ve always wanted to fly.
     
    That night, as I’m going to sleep, I force myself not to think of anything but the dream. I go over all the details I can remember. I don’t want to think of anything else between being awake and going to sleep. I go to sleep and dream. When I wake in the morning, I remember everything. I’ve ‘caught hold’ of the dream.
    After breakfast, I go to feed and take care of the birds. It’s a school day so I do everything in a hurry. There are eight new eggs. I take them out of the nests and put eggs into three other nests. There are ten birds now sitting eggs. The first eggs should start hatching in another week. I look into the flight cage where I fly at night. I wish I could be in the dream, flying there, instead of outside, getting ready for school.
    All day I wait to get back to my birds, even more, to get back into the dream. The day at school is more like a dream than the dream. I’m turned upside down. The realest thing is the dream and the next real thing is watching my birds. Going to school, writing English papers, doing geometry, studying Biology or talking to people isn’t real at all. The things that are happening in the days of my life are now the way the dream used to be. I know they’re happening, but I don’t care enough to remember.
    The days and nights go on. Babies begin hatching in the nests. More eggs are laid. Every pair is well on the way. There is an average of better than four eggs per nest. All the birds look healthy.
    Because I talk to them in my dreams, I feel very close to the birds, especially the males; because I’m still flying in the male cage. I wonder what will happen when the dream catches up with the day and I’m left alone in the flight cage. Or maybe I’ll be with a femalein one of the breeding cages, except there’re no extra females. I don’t have any control of the dream; I can only wait and see what happens.
    In the day I try talking to the males, the ones I talk to in my dreams, especially Alfonso; but they ignore me. They don’t recognize me at all, except as Birdy, the boy. It makes me feel rejected, alone. I spend my days watching different birds with binoculars because it gets me close, blocks out everything else; the birds fill my whole vision. They’re the way they are in my dreams, real my size. I feel physically close to them and they’re not just little feathered animals. I’m getting to hate taking my eyes from the binoculars and looking at myself and everything around me. My hands, my feet, are grotesque. I’m becoming a stranger in myself, in my own cages, with my own birds.
    I stop doing the flying exercise. If I can fly in my dreams, I don’t need to fly in the real world. I’m ready to accept the fact that there’s most likely no way I can actually get myself off the ground, anyway. I could probably manage an extended glide, but I wouldn’t fly. I’m also finding it isn’t so much the flying I want, not as a boy flapping heavy wings; I want to be a bird. In my dreams I am a bird and that’s all that matters.
    I’m making egg food three times a day. I’m using almost a dozen eggs a day now. There are young in all the nests. It isn’t nearly as much fun having so many birds. When you get too far away from anything and there’s too much of it, the outside is all you see and it becomes work like anything else. It’s also hard for me to handle the birds. I feel like an awkward giant; the bird is only a bit of feathers beating and struggling in my hand. It takes the wonderful part away.
    Then, I have something new happen in the dream. I’m in the flight cage as usual; the other males are still with me. I’m flying up and over a perch without landing on it. It’s a trick Alfonso has been teaching me. Alfonso watches for a while, then suggests we go down and have a