The Warbler

by Sarah Beth Durst

If you have the choice, she said, don’t face your fate alone.

I don’t want to be alone anymore.

“That’s how the curse wins,” I say. “Expectations cage us. What other people expect. What we think they expect. What we expect of ourselves. The rules that we think are unbreakable.”

She chose to be happy.

“It makes you brave. You found a way to keep your heart intact through all of this—the fact that you can still care, that you’re still a good person . . . It’s remarkable.

Remarkable.

Hope is the thing with feathers—That perches in the soul—And sings the tune without the words—And never stops—at all.

We’re all caged.

white roses and peonies were three calla lilies.

“But we knew we could count on you.” Peacock pats my hand. “We knew you were the one who’d change things as soon as you arrived here, back where it all began. We knew if you were pushed hard enough, you would do it.”

“Maybe they like to sound cryptic and mystical because it’s easier than admitting that life doesn’t always go the way you planned.”

We don’t know each other well. We might not have a future. Then again, we might. “Yes,” I say. “I’d like that.”

Mom died on her own terms.

I’m not angry now. Not at my mother, who lied to protect me. Not at Cora, who tried to honor her dying friend’s wish. Not even at Rose, who just wanted her daughter to experience what she never could.

“It’s the story of a girl who couldn’t leave and a girl who couldn’t stay—and the boy who loved them both.