Sophisticated

My name was, no, is Bird. The irony could fill a freaking water pitcher.

I lived my life in checks, those tiny little boxes you go tick tick on. It was the pattern of my favorite shirt, the boundaries I had set my life upon, settled nicely like the frame of my glasses with frames as thick as a block of wood.

It was hard to see through them, so why did I even wear them?

Oh, that's right.

They were the cheapest in the store and my mother always bought the cheapest thing. She was a miser, my father was a thief, spent time in jail for taking what didn't belong to him. His wife never gave what did belong to her. His son never had anything that belonged to him.

Goodness gracious. We were the perfect picture of useless, trash-tier family.

So only God knows who this woman was sitting right across the table, saying the strangest things.

I could string her words together, gosh I was that good at English. She said I love you. She was still saying it.

And the Bird in me wanted to drink some bleach and drop dead in a tizzy, in a panic about having the cage open wide. We were both pathetic.

I didn't know how long I could be. Not when her hands smoothly glided to my side and pried themselves into mine.

She asked for a dollar. I passed it to her.

She asked for a hundred. I pressed it onto her palm.

Her hair was thick, an Afro so dark it reminded me of the soot plastered on my father's face when he came home from the mines that paid him pittance for hire, but in a good way. This was a pleasant type of dark. She was wearing a Fendi, my goodness, beauty in another beauty, well-manicured nails affixed to delicate fingers, sophistication in the purest form.

She looked like she'd be the light in his shitty life.

Bird wanted her to be the light in his shitty life. He thought he saw the mother of his five sons. He told her.

"You are the mother of my five sons."

It wasn't quite the same after.

Not when that hand made contact with his face, shifting it from its crooked position into a more crooked one. Bird thought he lost a tooth in that slap. Bird was angry that he lost a tooth.

"What the hell?!"

"I should be asking you that, lunatic!"

The face he was looking at now was nothing like his sophisticated damsel. This was twisted in anger, a foreign look of the one who loved him.

Bird heard her go on, bolstered by a crowd giving him disgusted glances.

"You crazy!" she yelled in a tizzy, "I just asked you for directions and you speak such trash! Pervert!"

Huh?

Bird looked on in disbelief as she told a tale where he was perpetrator and not the one approached. So it appeared that his father had been right all along?

You'd get into trouble someday in this world full of crazies, Bird.

He recalled asking back. So you were framed by crazies for stealing?

Nope, his old man had a smug smile on, I stole alright. I just didn't run fast enough.

From the crime scene?

Nope. From the lady living two streets away. She was my girl. Sophisticated, I tell you. I loved her. Run away from those types, Bird. They are trouble.

Like mom?

Nope. Your mom is a walking pile of bones, not trouble. She's ugly too.

So not like mom?

Yes, not like your mom. Run away from them, the sophisticated ones.