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daniel a. mayback
bird boy.
sometimes i just wish everything was a little quieter, and then i remember, i'm deaf. it doesn't get any quieter than this. and sometimes...sometimes...i wish everything was shrieking at me like a silver-streaked banshee rising from a lake under a hallowed moon, that everyone screamed from the bellows of their respiratory systems that are layered in ash, so that everything didn't feel this isolated.
but i know that sound doesn't make any difference, one way or the other. before i lost my hearing, all they did was fight and beat on me, but now they have a shred of pity shining down on their tarnished souls. they're still trying to pretend like they haven't sinned though. they're looking for redemption in the wrong place, i'm pretty sure it doesn't lie at the bottom of an eight-ounce beer can that crumbles under the weight of a clenched fist.
my parents never bothered to learn how to sign. i did.
i remember one night, i was lying in my backyard, bare toes seeping into the grass that dripped with the jewels of dew, molding the dirt as if i was a sculpture. there was a ladybug, clad in crimson silk, perched atop a dandelion whose petals of gold shifted into a million tiny dancers in the purest of white. it sat there, the same as i did, watching a shooting star travel its path across the milky way. i wished that evening, to never have to talk to my parents again. and in a moment, the ladybug and the star were both gone.
a couple of months later, i had meningitis, which packed its bags and left a gift behind. or a curse, the way most people see it. i do miss the mellifluous song of the doves that used to roost in the barn. i do miss the murmuring of the creek, the playful neigh of our old neighbor's horses. but i guess that doesn't much matter anyway, now that i don't live there. we moved to the city where the deaf school is.
i'm not going to say that it was an easy transition because that's ignoring the thousands of times i wondered what it would be like to be one of the kids that sat with headphones in. or one of the kids with a cochlear implant. or one of the kids who was only partially deaf. but i don't wish for that anymore. because i can't afford surgery, i would hate to be partially anything, and there's no use crying over spilled cow's milk.
if anything, it's been better. i don't have to listen to my parents. if they try to yell at me, i can walk away and shut them out the way i used to try to. the kids at my school are super cool too. they chug down beers and turn their music up to the point where the cops will come, but they also aren't dumb like the kids were in the country. they don't try to tip cows over. they don't only talk about girls. they talk about theatre (i've gotten into tech theatre, by the way), they talk about big dreams, and they don't give me swirlies for being a wallflower. or awkward. for remembering the little things that everyone else forgets or doesn't notice to begin with. plus, i've picked up the violin.
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