I wrote a song for her. It was a song I could not sing for her. The song was as beautiful as she was, as beautiful as she was to me, and my voice is ugly and rough and would not do the song proud. She deserved a beautiful song, and she deserved a beautiful voice to sing it.
So I bought a bird with a singing voice and taught it my song. I taught that bird day and night. But the bird was stubborn - it had its own song to sing and did not always want to sing mine. Sometimes I thought it did not want to sing my song at all, even though it knew how. It would mix notes from my song with notes from its own, re-arranging their order and creating a new song, a song that was not my song. I could not have this bird sing the wrong song for her, so I let it sing its own song and watched it fly away.
I had made the mistake of buying a bird with its own song already to sing. I needed a bird that knew no songs at all, so that when I taught it mine it would be the only one it would sing. So I bought an egg and waited for it to hatch. I kept it under a lamp and watered it daily and in a few weeks the first cracks started to appear. I sat with it all night and watched as the egg hatched and a little baby bird emerged from its shell, blind but flapping its wings and chirping away. It was no good to me; it was already singing its own song, a song that was not my song for her. So I threw it in the bin. It must have learnt its first song while it was still in its egg. I would have to get at a bird before it learnt its first song.
I went back to the shop and bought another egg. This one I did not heat and did not water, but left it in the dark. After only a few days I took the egg and placed it carefully upon my worktop. I took a hammer and tried to crack the egg, but I hit too hard and broke the bird as well as the shell. I tried again with another egg, but this time I used a toffee hammer to delicately tap the bird out of its shell. It was like peeling a boiled egg for breakfast, but instead of runny yolk I had a tiny baby bird, still asleep, lying in front of me on my worktop.
I immediately set about teaching it my song as it slept. I taught it every day and every night, until it opened its eyes and awoke to life. It flapped its wings and opened its beak as I watched, waiting in silence, wringing my hands. And it awoke with a song, and the song was mine; it was my song for her.
The bird sang my song for her for several weeks and I listened carefully to make sure every note was there in the correct order, nothing out of place. Every time the bird reached the end of the song it would start again at the beginning. It sang only my song for her, it knew no other, and I watched and listened as it flew around the confines of my room. After nearly two months of nothing but my song I was ready to let it go out into the world and sing my song for her with the beauty she deserved. I took the bird on the tip of my finger, opened the window, and sent it out to teach the other birds my song.
When it returned it sang the songs of the other birds and it never sang my song again. I should not have been surprised. It had been outnumbered, it had forgotten its first few weeks in this world with me and had adapted to the patterns and the language of its peers. It had come back to me, but it was no use to me. So I threw it in the bin.
I sold all my meagre belongings, cashed in all my bonds, emptied all my penny jars, and, gathering up every last scrap of money I had, I spent it all on birds eggs; as many as I could buy. I extracted a bird from each with a knock or two from my toffee hammer and laid them all out in a row in my work room. This time I taught them all my song as they slept. Then when they awoke they all sang my song. They sang it for themselves and they sang it to each other. If one forgot a note another would remind it, until my song was all that they could sing and all that they would sing. They sang it in perfect harmony.
There were so many of them and they had grown so large I could no longer keep them in my room. Instead I set about building them an aviary. I built it out of wood with my own bare hands until they were bloody and broken. I filled the aviary with trees and streams and let the birds loose. They filled the aviary with my song for her. They sang it night and day. Every penny I made I put towards more birds eggs and hatched more birds. I sent them straight to the aviary where the other birds would teach it my song. Their language was my song.
I would walk in this garden of her beauty and sit and listen as I drank my tea. My eyes would fill with tears at the sound of this beauty. Her beauty. The very wood of the aviary shook with the sonorous notes of the song and filled me with an intensity of feeling matched only by a look from her eyes. The experience would leave me shaken and I would have to lie quietly in semi-darkness until the feeling passed.
In time the aviary became full. There were so many singing birds I could not see between them. They became a cloud of song. A cloud of song I had to set free.
One clear crisp morning I opened the hatch and set the birds free. I knew it was a risk, there were other birds out there with different songs, songs they might teach my birds to replace my song for her; but I hoped my birds would instead teach them. I had to send them out to spread my message of love to her. I hoped that they would fly together, rest and mate together, to remind them of my song for her.
I have not seen the birds again. None of them returned. But some afternoons, when I take a walk in the park, I swear that I can hear the singing of that song. The song that I wrote for her.
The song that tells her that I love her. Just so she knows. Just so you know.
