"The Bird in Your Chest"

Katherine Souza

There’s a lump in your throat. It’s wriggling. You say you don’t know why this happens when I touch your sternum. But I see the lump for what it is: a bird you swallowed to keep the chirping muffled in a corporeal tomb.

This bird of betrayal! This fiend has gossiped about you to characters less savory and even less sweet than me. Yet you did not kill the creature. You swallowed it, kept its cage not gilded but damp and dark and beating, pressing upon your stomach and throat.

If you would be so kind, I’d reach down your tongue and pull this vagrant free, but you nor the bird knows what to do with me. The animal would look upon me and produce sounds in a language dead and still be incapable of summoning some honest emotion. Maybe you’d look at the bird with shame and finally snap its neck. It’d be an easy thing to do.

Perhaps we should leave the bird in your throat. And as you two suffocate one another, you can have a conversation in its dead language.

Start off small: “Where have you been?” Then build up to: “Why did you betray me?”

Somewhere in between you will realize the other only had the best intentions. Perhaps you’ll exchange in these whispers a crumb of trust to commemorate re-communion between man and bird. Perhaps—and this is wishful thinking—you’ll say “thank you” to the creature for never giving up on its escape.

Would you like me present for this? Hold your hand? Hold the bird? Pepper both your pain with small whispers of my own? I’ll speak through open lips, and gritted teeth, and gentle bats of eyelashes. We could go outside, if you want, and lay on a bed of leaves. That way, if the bird flies off, it would not bash against a window.

The lump rises and your eyes are painfully puffy.

It will scream upon its release.

Your hand tightens around my arm. Apologies, my dearest, I could help by wringing your neck and crushing the beast alongside you. A more selfish part of me wants to hear what it has to say.

Your grip bruises my arm.

Screeching, its words eke through your nose and eyes and the gaps between gnashed teeth, and your solemn eyes are begging for forgiveness. I restrain, if only to get you to accept the situation. It pecks against the back of your teeth and scratches your tongue. When I kiss you, I feel you open your mouth against mine, and muffled flutters dance on both our lips. As we pull apart, sincere words, dead as they may be, pour out. I can understand them. The bird flies away, leaving its song, the lyrics of which are woven with earnesty’s silver thread and tenderness’s golden tassel.

Reprieve leaves both your mouths to sit in my ears like warm cotton. It’s your face—not the creature—which betrays you.

You aren’t ashamed of the bird! You love it dearly and are happy to see it fly.

Published 0ctober 6, 2025

Katherine Souza

Katherine Souza is an illustrator, writer, and game designer lurking in Maine. She consults with the many creatures in her re-wilded yard for tales to spin, and when all else fails turns to the gerbils inside. Her work is found in Cold Signal Magazine issue three, Hellarkey vol. IV, and Elder Scrolls Online.

"The Bird in Your Chest" by Katherine Souza is also available to stream and share on dogyard mag's podcast "The Bark at dogyard" on YouTube and Spotify