Leslie Benigni | prose

Five dead sparrows drowned in my mother’s pond. There was an event of a sort to go to  and there was the barely, no-sight rushing from backdoor to back gate to follow the same mother  of mine to such an event—a no-sight rushing, but at the end of the aisle of concrete sidewalk boxwoods at the right and left, I looked off in between the hedge gaps. My sandals stopped me at  the edge of the pond with silence. My stomach lurched with the blue clump of something wrong  until it scratched upwards. That feeling was made of the same marbles that filled the old home we  moved into. There were shapes inorganic to the pond and I looked closer still. 

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They were fledglings. 

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They were sprawled in sickly algae, with slimed tufted feathers, with claws extended and  eyes closed to the sunlight.  

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My mother’s voice trailed above the garden gate and over the shrubs and into the alleyway.  

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What did she say? What did she say? What did she say? 

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I had to leave them.