A soft mist and the soft light of day creeped into the house as I watched the blue roosters. I couldn’t tell how many there were, but they were there.
a home birth in a marble bathtub
a fish bereft of gills
tears on tired smiles
washed the blood away
I had lost my baby teeth in every room. They never reached my pillowcase, only the wooden floors and then the garbage bin my mother kept outside the kitchen door. I don’t think there were blue roosters back then.
This house - points in space and time, is a dream I forget more and more every day.
I feel I would have remembered blue roosters though.
They didn’t seem to mind me or mind that I minded them. Maybe they thought I didn’t mind them. Maybe I reminded them of someone familiar, a caretaker possibly. I assume they had to have a caretaker for independent roosters are generally slaughtered in the wild, with their bones harvested by vultures and ants and maybe only few ever truly grow up to become roosters.
Once done cooking, I turned to take my plate to the dining table as I usually did. I hadn’t noticed it before but all there was, was empty space. No dining table or furniture filled up the house. There were sun-tipped windows and plain white walls that never seemed to have heard of life or felt an idiot child run his greasy hands across them. It was empty, except for myself and the blue roosters. Of course, there was the refrigerator, a pan, a stove and some rusty cutlery, but not enough to make the place feel whole.
I counted the blue roosters again and again and again. I’m still not sure how many there were, but they were there.
I placed my plate on the kitchen counter and bent down close to one.
While they were repulsive creatures to look at, they did have an appetizing quality to them. I wondered if that was just biology. Thinking of biology, I wondered if the roosters could have been hens. I thought to myself a moment.
I prefer the word rooster because it rolls of the tongue better than hen, so I decided to stick with it, also, I didn’t want to look for chicken balls or lack thereof so early in the morning.
I reached my hand out to pet the foul creature and it inched away from me. A moment passed as it watched me with its beady eyes and then it slowly drew near. I brushed my hand across its chest. It was the softest soft I had ever felt. His ruffly body trembled which creeped me out, so I backed up.
…
The mist was thick and it felt like within it, there was something hidden; like a garden in the back of my mind.
No, not a garden, closer to the clouds.
… a balcony. The house had a balcony.
So through the soft mist, with my plate in hand I went out to the balcony and sat on the floor. A few roosters followed. The clouds and the sky felt close and like a wave, it all washed over me.
...
We spoke about blue roosters once, long ago. It was merely a passing thought - a grin, a sentence about a blue rooster she had seen in a book kept on a shelf in her father’s study. Fuck, I hated her father.
He was shorter than me, far far far far shorter than me. I think that’s why he didn’t like me.
I guess I remember two things. A sentence about blue roosters and her stupid dad.
...
I was in my old house, all but empty. I had always wanted to leave. As a child I would stare out my bedroom window and imagine a different sunrise, a different sunset, a different… anything.
My mother told me we were just passing through and she did, as did my father, as did every friend that ever came by or anyone that ever meant something at some point in time.
And I did too, long ago.
But there I was again, in that balcony, where we would stare at big white clouds shaped like fawns and lambs and then watch the sun dip as dust and amber floated against the approaching black.
She mentioned how the blue roosters weren’t blue like the evening but blue like a winter morning with mist and fog and that they seemed soft, as soft as a puppy-kitten hybrid, she had said.
...
The house was to be sold and it had been years since I had been there. I had come the night before to drop off the keys to the new locks. As soon as I had entered the house, a deep need for sleep came over me, a forgotten sleep, a sleep etched into the bones of the house. I used to dream here, I had thought to myself, then drifted off into a dreamy sleep. I had dreamt of talking chipmunks for some reason.
Once I awoke, I found myself on the floor of my old bedroom and the soft light of the earliest sunrise was seeping into the room, flickering around my eyes, drowning them in light. When I opened the door of my old room, a soft mist had creeped into the house and in front of me were the god-awful blue animals pecking at the floor.
There was so much mist and so many blue roosters.
Plus, how long had those eggs been in that fridge? And that ketchup?
...
I didn’t think the new owners would like blue roosters parading around their new home but at the same time I wasn’t sure what to do.
Where had they come from? Where could I take them? Did I care enough to take them? Was it even my responsibility? I wondered if normal roosters liked blue roosters. What if they didn’t?
In my humble opinion, all chickens look better fried, so who cares about rooster racism?
At the end of the day, I would never meet the new owners, and this city was now just a place for sombre vacations.
I doubted I would ever return.
…
They had begun to gaze up towards the sky and their feathers would catch wisps of air ever so gentle.
They weren’t so bad I guess, just a little ugly.
A passing thought. A moment. Mist and fog. Fawn shaped clouds turned lambs by a gentle breeze, and a sentence about strange creatures found in a book on the bookshelf of a man with a napoleon complex.
We stopped meeting soon after, and many years have passed since.
...
The blue roosters and I gazed up at the sky together. An infant sun with a soft blue.
Some time and space bent around us, till I knew it was time to leave.
I reached over to one of the creatures and brushed my hand across its chest.
…
I tossed the keys onto the kitchen counter then headed to the main door. There was a beam of sunlight trailing in. My eyes followed the trail of sunlight from the window to the walls to the door to the floor, to my feet.
By my feet, rested a single blue feather.
I picked it up and looked back. All the roosters had returned inside, staring at me quietly with their emotionless eyes. Can I keep it? I asked. A sound wasn’t made but I figured, whatever.
I put the feather in my back pocket then opened the door, walked out and ever so-slowly closed it as I watched the blue roosters watch me, hoping to make it last just a little while longer.
...
As I walked down the off-grey road back to my parents’ home, glints of sunlight floated over the misty streets.
The sky still blue, held big white clouds that looked like big white clouds and nothing more.
I took the feather out of my pocket and fixed it in my hair.
We once spoke about blue roosters and soon after we stopped meeting, but she was once there and so was I.
I felt the warmth of something kind forgotten, returned.
Sunlight always reached that door.
There were blue roosters there that morning, in that old house all but empty, soon to be a home for someone else,
soon to be a home once again.
