Nestless
Once upon a time, there was an egg, a tiny sphere of pearl-white chalk. Yet around this egg, there was no nest of cozy twigs, mud, and leaves. There was no mother bird with a worm squirming between its beak. There was just an egg—a nestless, cold egg, but an egg nonetheless. One day, the egg cracked as eggs eventually do. From within the egg emerged a baby bird, wet and slimy, oozing from the jagged crevices it had carved and pried open on its own. The baby bird was startled, her little heart fluttering in angst, for her evolutionary instincts and avian ancestors had baked clear instructions into her blood: Keep warm in your mother’s nest. Learn from her, and then fly.
As moments became hours and hours became weeks, the bird instructed itself in the art of walking, hunting, and flying. Before long, she was the most beautiful creature of the sky, with feathers of honey and the song of a flute.
And so, off embarked the bird to build a nest for herself—the nest she never knew. On the grandest tree, she scavenged the finest twigs, delicate enough for cushion, firm enough for her weight. From the richest earth, she collected the most fragrant mud, malleable enough to mold, dry enough to hold shape. She built her nest with utmost precision, her heart extending from her breast to her beak as she nudged each twig into its home. Once the nest was architected with twigs and stabilized with mud, the bird decorated with leaves, flowers, and rosebuds. Not an inch of her nest was barren of love—a sweet, honey-like love that she poured upon every groove.
It was not long before the bird laid eggs of her own. She kept them warm at night, helped them hatch, fed them worms, and taught them how to fly and sing. Her nest was complete.
One day, gray clouds began to creep over the horizon. The bird was bright, and so she knew: It was likely a storm, and it shall pass, as all storms do. But soon, the gray clouds became boulders of fury, twisting and turning about themselves, growing and grumbling in the distance. The bird’s neighbors packed up their nests and took off, for fear that the thunder would rattle their branches, and the lightning would strike the trees on which they resided.
And yet the bird stayed. For her nest was of the most pristine twigs, the finest mud. Her nest was one with the branch on which it was erected. The clouds became grayer, the thunder louder, the wind fiercer, and the lightning brighter. The bird and her nest were enveloped in the storm, too violent to escape but too vicious to stay. In the storm, the bird’s nest began to erode. She brandished her wings and grasped her nest, but love was not enough to keep the twigs from shattering, the mud from melting, the leaves from tearing. And one day there was no nest at all, just the bird, still clasped relentlessly to the branch that once caressed all she knew.
Day by day, the storm bruised her with bullets of hail and plucked her with sharp gusts of wind. The bird’s song was a shriek, her feathers of honey stolen by the wind. Her nest was gone, but the storm persisted. It did not pass. She had no feathers with which to fly, so she slid slowly down the branch and down the tree.
She walked away, nestless. She walked for eons it seemed, so long that she passed the storm.
She passed the storm that never passed.
The sun blazed with a fiery love upon her flesh. And day by day, feather by feather, she grew back her coat of golden honey and recalled how to sing her song. She walked until she flew. And she flew until, one day, she saw a tree, the most beautiful tree. The most beautiful tree with the most beautiful branch—a branch in need of a nest.