A Different Blue

by Amy Harmon

“Once upon a time there was a little blackbird, pushed from the nest, unwanted. Discarded. Then a Hawk found her and swooped her up and carried her away, giving her a home in his nest, teaching her to fly. But one day the Hawk didn’t come home, and the little bird was alone again, unwanted. She wanted to fly away.”

“None of us can help where we were scattered, Blue. But none of us has to remain where we were scattered. Why don’t you focus on where you’re going and less on where you come from? Why don’t you focus more on what makes you brilliant and less on what makes you angry? You are missing a key element to the story. Maybe the moral of the legend is that we are all carved, created, and formed by a master hand. Maybe we are all works of art.”

“I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us Don’t tell—they’d banish us, you know.”

‘Life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.’

Regret is just life’s aftertaste. No matter what you choose, you’re gonna wonder if you shoulda done things different. I didn’t necessarily choose wrong. I just chose. And I lived with my choice, aftertaste and all.

You’re wrong about one thing, though. Girls like me notice guys like you. We just don’t think we deserve them.”

“I keep wishing you had had a better life . . . a different life. But a different life would have made you a different Blue.” He looked at me then. “And that would be the biggest tragedy of all.” With

“Someone told me once that to create true art you must be willing to bleed and let others watch.” I