Wasted Words

The broken wren lay in potted plants that hung on the windowsill. We’d watered it just that morning. The soil and loam were still damp; moisture crept into the twisted feathers that clung to that poor thing’s shattered wings. ‘I can’t die like this,’ the wren whimpered. Tremors wrecked up and down its body, trembling from beak to tail. There was a soft imprint on the glass, a smear of particulate where it had struck the window. ‘I didn’t show them. I didn’t show them that I could be better.’ But the ants were already crawling up its legs, its back, its eyes.