a mixed-media painting accompanied by an ekphrastic short story.

Her feathers were white, but not empty white. They held colors inside them, like pearl beneath water. And her eyes - there was something deeply unsettling about her eyes. Not in a frightening way. Familiar.

For a moment, nobody moved. Then the hummingbird spoke.
“Don’t you dare.” The father stared at her while the boy stopped crying for approximately two seconds.
“You can talk,” he whispered. The bird turned toward him.
“So can you.”
The boy frowned.
“I know.”
“I know you know.”
She flew closer and hovered in front of his wet face.
“Then use it.”
The boy looked at her a little confused.
“Use what?”
“Your body.” The father blinked. The bird continued.

“When it hurts, let it hurt. When you need to cry, cry. Your body is not embarrassing you. It is speaking.” She looked at the boy’s scraped knee.
“Water leaves the eyes. Blood leaves the skin. Breath shakes in the chest. The body moves what needs to move.”
She tilted her tiny head.

“And Crying, crying is like the soul taking a sh**.”

The father stared at her.
“WHAT?” She stared back.
“Isn’t that the kind of language you people understand?”
“NO! I mean—no?!”
“Oh.”
She drew herself up, cleared her throat with tiny, regal dignity, and turned toward the boy.
“Nothing shameful is happening here. Crying is like the bowel movement of the soul.”
She gave his father a quick little wink. Then her eyes narrowed.
“But something shameful almost did.” The man stiffened.
“I was only trying to toughen him up.”
“I know.” There was no anger in her voice and somehow that made it worse.
“Who taught you that becoming strong required becoming less alive?” He said nothing.
“Who taught you that a boy must leave pieces of himself behind in order to become a man?”
The father looked down at the ground. The bird moved closer.
“You were about to shame him for a natural response of his own body. And then you wonder why men become strangers to half of themselves.”

The boy looked at his father. His father looked somewhere else.
“Your people have divided themselves into such strange little pieces,” the bird said.
“This belongs to men. That belongs to women. This feeling is acceptable. That one must be hidden. This part of you may live. That part must die.”
She tilted her tiny head. “And then you spend half your lives trying to become whole again. You are human. All of it is.”

The man swallowed. Something in his face changed.
The bird saw it. Of course she did.

“You were a little boy once too.” His jaw tightened.
“Don’t.”
It came out quietly. The bird remained where she was.
“You cried.”
“Stop.”
“And someone taught you not to.”
The man looked at her.

His eyes were wet now.
He hated that they were wet.
This wasn’t a football game.
And because he hated the tears, he finally understood.
The bird came closer.
“You do not have to hand the cage to him simply because someone handed it to you.”
And that was it. Something broke. Or perhaps something finally stopped holding. The man covered his face. His shoulders shook.
A sound came out of him that frightened him with its own age. It did not sound like the man he had become.
It sounded like the human he had buried.

His son stood up. For a moment, he simply watched his father.
Then he walked over and wrapped his small arms around his father’s waist.
“See, Papa? Your soul has to go potty too.”
The man laughed through his tears. Then he held his son tighter. The palms kept bending toward the wind.
And the world did not end because a man let himself be human.
The hummingbird hovered before them for another moment.

The father finally looked up
“Who are you?”
She looked at him with those ancient, impossible eyes.
Then she kind of smiled.
“I am what you keep trying to separate yourself from.”
He waited for more.
There was none.
The hummingbird turned toward the palms and disappeared into the green.

a hummingbird was flying above the green coast, where the jungle leaned toward the sea and the palms moved slowly in the salt wind, when she noticed a little boy below.
He was carrying palm leaves across the sand, one after another,
building something that looked halfway between a shelter and a kingdom.
The hummingbird landed on a branch and watched him with quiet joy.
She loved watching children build things.
They rarely asked whether something was reasonable before making it.

A little later, as the boy ran through the grass, his foot caught on a root. He fell. Hard. And immediately, he began to cry.
His father was nearby.
He walked toward him, already opening his mouth.
“Come on. Big boys don’t—”
WHACK.
Something soft hit the side of his head.
“What the—”
He spun around.
A white hummingbird was hovering beside him.
“You little—”
He waved his hands at her.
She moved exactly three inches backward. That was all.
The man stopped.
Because now he was actually looking at her.

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