cont'd

(cont'd..) the birds were poised on the concrete roof, their speckled eyes motionless in the sun. she noticed the shiny ebony feathers on their restless wings. mansfield shifted from one leg to another as the peculiarity of the situation slapped him. and on the off chance that these birds could be dangerous. he looked around the room. tension. chitchat had dropped. eyes were drawn to the window, to a concrete roof with a wall of coal black birds.
"vultures"..a whisper
mansfield sharply looked him into silence.
"spare us your overactive imagination, mr lung" in that tone of confidence that belies the uneasy lingering sense of worry entrenched in his gut as he told his brain that he should not let the worry surface that they will pretend that this is absolutely normal and that once you say things are normal out loud with conviction many many times, things will indeed be perfectly normal and remain so. if you dare to articulate your worry to materialize it into spoken or written or thought words, if you let it past your gut-grip and give birth to it in form, then worry will be your miscarriage, will be your downfall, will cause these mean=looking birds to feed on your carcass after they've pecked you to death, like a sorry spiculated human sponge. just like a tom&jerry episode where tom falls only when he realizes he is in mid-air. if he hadn't looked down, he'd still be enjoying a stroll in the clouds.
she, however, thought about her life now. how could she not flash her life to her side when these creatures were about to devour it for lunch?
she thought of an arch in a city where all was so cheap. where people lived for music and ate only to live to play music. where the soul of a violin vibrated on a bridge. where it was a sin not to listen to the growls of a river that ran under the bridge, river of red water brimming with stories of times and peoples whose hymns wrapped themselves around the music of the violin. she thought about how she was just passing through. from the arch to the bridge over running red water and into the resonating melodies. she could never reach that zenith of happiness that beatific peace of simply being there because she knew. she knew she was just passing through. she listened intently she let it strum through her being, quivering with every stroke of the soul of the violin like a cat unfurling its paws to the warmth of the sun, but with the poisoning awareness that she was neither making the music nor staying long enough to enjoy it.