Inkling | rejected & unpublished short stories

Feather Feelings

   Feather collectors, what we all are.

We collect feelings like we collect feathers. They accumulate over time and never at once. Every feather differs from another, in terms of colour, shape and length. There are brown ones, with freckles growing denser near the stem. There are blue ones, as long as two palms lined up and also red ones dipped in rich orange shade.

But why are feathers light and feelings the opposite? When you miss someone, the feeling weighs you down like an anchor tied around your heart, sagging your shoulders the same level of your chin. When you love someone, the feeling forces your attention to the object of the feeling and compels you to stay there, gluing your mind and heart to them. How could you deny the heaviness of feeling betrayed? The dumbbell crashing everything you ever built as if they were merely house of cards. Feelings are strong and heavy enough to destroy each other like they are little wrecking balls themselves, warring and combatant. Always fighting, the voices in your head; one voice belongs to sensibility and the other irrationality.

That's why feathers, when amassed together in a ginormous number, becomes heavier than metal and steel. It's the combination that makes is insufferably heavy and weighty.

Nonetheless, Anna has no idea why she keeps letting go of the feathers if it is claimed that we are all feather collectors.

Anna admires one boy from afar, taking and breathing in his every posture until she memorizes them like the multiplication table. The boy might as well be made out of gold with a smile that just brightens up the badly lit room every day. He owns a pun dictionary in his head and soon enough, Anna found herself building her own to match his. Her admiration became a feather and she squeezes it into her pockets. He talks to her one day and she felt butterflies in her stomach. Another feather she pocketed that day. She felt betrayed when he used a private joke they shared to another girl. She kept that feather anyway.

As time passes by, her pockets became heavier and suspects that the boy never kept feathers about her anyway. She decides to empty her pockets. She found a river on the way back and drowned everything in it.

Then, enter Allie, swooping in into her life like a zap. The exact opposite of the golden boy, he is. She tried not to keep any feathers because she did not want to face the pain of letting go anymore.

"I bought you ice cream," he says one day, leaving her flattered.

"That colour looks good on you," he says, leaving her feeling confident.

"Let's read a book together," he says, leaving her feeling happy.

"You look sad. Want to talk about it?" he says, leaving her the opposite of sad.

Then, it became obvious, Allie's pockets. His pockets were full of feathers and she kind of sensed that the feathers belong to her. He tries to conceal it but his pockets grew bulkier and baggier, she worries that it was going to burst.

That is not what scares her. At least, not yet. What terrifies her is when she looks down to her own pockets, she finds them occupied. There are feathers in her pockets. She feels the urge to empty her pockets again but could not find the will to do it. She walked to and fro her house but the only thing she gained was the thought that maybe, just maybe, the feathers are to be kept this time.

One night, it happens. Allie wants to give Anna the feather.

"Anna, I want to tell you something," he says, hands in pockets.

Inside, Anna is panicking. All her life, when someone tries to give her the feather, she ends up running away and shutting them out like a permanently slammed door. She's not fragile, she's just as permanent as a whiteboard marker stain. It only needs one wrong move to erase her. In which, the eraser is when someone gives her the feather. The feather used to erase friendship, conversations and possibilities in Anna's life. She has a tendency to run away from things that hurts her, including with everything that has the potential to do so.

Now, she stands with Allie looking straight into her soul.

"I like you a lot, I'm not kidding," he says, handing her the feather.

She wishes Allie knows how much effort it takes her to smile and take the feather. It kills her to stay put and let her insecurities wash over her like a tidal wave. She hopes he knows that when he did not run away at her silence and waits for her, that was what made her stay. Maybe, just maybe, she should stop emptying her pockets for once.

Give herself a chance for once.

Be brave for once.

Hold on to the feather feelings for once.

Because in the end, we're all feather collectors.