The Return

The lovesick lovebird stares longingly through demarcated steel bars, watching his mate as she floats on the breeze like a lucid adventurer negotiating her way through gravity-defying dreamscapes and the constant lure of distant horizons. Suddenly, the bars of the cage seem to melt into nothingness and the incarcerated creature hops through the little square space and out into the blue void, stretching his wings for the first time as the wild spirits of exhilaration course through his feathery senses like liquid birdseed. Thus were the green-yellow lovebirds reunited, soon dipping merrily between rose-framed cottages and down past the clipped suburban hedgerows in a synchronised fit of aviational excellence, resting for a while beneath the leafy tears of a young willow as twin scarlet beaks fuse together in tenderness, passion and joy. A blackbird arrived to interrupt their romantic chatter and the indomitable shadow of Father Time began to stalk the fading sunlight of the late-afternoon. They looked into one another's eyes in sorrow and desperation, but the little bird was soon forced to offer one final peck before returning to his cage. The metal bars made their inevitable reappearance and the wire door was firmly pinned shut. Until next time.