Room For Rent

The Daily Post

Last month’s editorial page lay rumpled on my floor. Its letters graying and damp-wrinkled, edges curling upward.

Broken shells that once held sunflower seeds piled in one corner and a plastic mirror with a silenced bell in the other. How that bell drove me crazy with its incessant, cheap-metal jingle!
In retrospect, it wasn’t really that bad.
Who would have thought I’d miss the annoying tickle-poke of tiny claws scratching up and down my wires, across and every which-way? But I do.
And the musty fragrance of pastel feathers, some of which are still stuck to me, fluffy reminders of the chirps and tweets that used to be —

when I was someone’s home.