The Birds
Hannah Lee
©
Copyright 2026 by Hannah Lee
|
Photo by Lan
Lin on Unsplash |
In
my childhood home, during the third week of the fifth grade, I
watched a pair of birds slowly build its nest in the upper right
crook of my front porch. Small, restless, and hardly more than a
flicker against the edge of the roof, they flew in and out in
uncertain bursts. I saw them every morning and every night. Landing,
leaving, and returning again with something thin and frail between
its beaks: A strand of grass, a piece of string, a fragile twig.
Their nest slowly began to grow, crowding the space between the two
walls.
After
a week, I noticed that the nest had begun to sag. The structure began
to crack and the wind often tugged at its composition. Piece by
piece, the weight of the nest rested onto something that couldn’t
hold it. The twigs bent and shifted, threatening to come apart.
“The
walls can’t hold it, daddy,” my sister would say, “It’s
gonna fall down.”
“Leave
the birds be,” he would insist, “Let nature do its job.”
While
my sister lost interest quickly, I couldn’t let go. I spent
days watching the bird return to adjust, add, and insist. No matter
how far the nest sagged, or how frayed the edges became, they
continued to come back. They continued to build off of something that
was doomed to fail, yet they stayed, as if effort alone could make it
enough.
On
one Friday afternoon, I scurried home, excited for the homework-free
weekend. Like routine, I stopped at the front door to take note of
the nest. Before I could lift my head, I gawked at a pile of grass,
string, and twigs on the concrete of our front patio.
My
feet shuddered backwards, slowly understanding what had happened. The
birds were nowhere to be found, probably flown away to somewhere
better accustomed to their needs, but I couldn’t escape. My
knees scraped against the stiff concrete, attempting to put the
broken pieces of their once grand nest back together, but I couldn’t
fix it. I wasn’t a bird.
“Daddy,
it fell,” I screamed, “It’s broken and they’re
never coming back.”
“What
broke? Who fell?” he responded.
The
fixture I had spent months watching was gone. And all that remained
was a pile of broken twigs and a memory of what was once standing.
That
night, my dad swept the pile of trash, in his
words, off the
porch. I begged him not to, in case the birds wanted to come back to
fix their nest.
“Sweetie,
they aren’t coming back,” he said, “Why would they
rebuild a nest somewhere that obviously can’t hold it.”
His
words lingered in my head throughout the night. It could hold it this
time, I thought. Maybe if they built a smaller base or used lighter
twigs.
That
morning, when I walked outside, chirping filled the space. Again,
they began constructing a new nest. Twig by twig, string by string,
the birds brought supplies back to the corner of our roof. I admired
their resilience. Rather than giving up, they had insisted on staying
in the corner– our corner. I spent the next few
weeks
watching them rebuild their home.
Two
weeks later, it fell again.
“Stupid
birds,” my sister said, “I knew it’d fall again.
That corner’s too small.”
She
was right. It had never been enough, yet I watched the birds as they
rebuilt, reshaped, and reconstructed their nest to fit. The walls
couldn’t hold it, the platform wasn’t wide enough, and
the weight of the nest had nowhere to go. Yet still they came back.
Yet still, they built. The third time, they returned with larger
twigs. The fourth, they shaped the nest in a different pattern.
“Stupid
birds,” I muttered.
I
watched them return over and over again, in the same place, with the
same fragile pieces, as if something would change this time. As if
wanting it to hold would make it hold.
Years
later, I found myself in places just as fragile, returning just as
the birds did.
In
conversations that had already ended, I scavenged for things I could
rebuild. I spent weeks searching between the lines for the smallest
moments that had already passed– a glance, a text, a pause, a
sentence that could have meant something more– and turned them
over and over until they felt like justifications to fly back towards
something that held nothing more than a damaged structure.
At
some point, the act of being wanted mattered more to me than the love
I craved in the people I obsessed over and the stories I tried to
rewrite. The obsession with returning became the need to be chosen.
And even if I knew I never would be, I returned to the fragments,
because it was easier to believe something could change, than to
accept that it was never mine to begin with.
If
I adjusted enough, said the right thing, waited for the right time,
made myself smaller, carried myself differently, entered a different
way, or shaped myself lighter, it wouldn’t fall. But it always
did and it always does. Those people would never stay for me the way
I stayed for them. They would never return with anything to add or
try to support what I was building. Yet still, I would come back. Yet
still, I would build.
The
birds never left our corner, even when I moved out of the house in
the eighth grade. The nest kept falling and the birds kept building.
They were never able to raise anything there, obsessed with building
a home that was never strong enough to hold what they were trying to
keep. Just returning to a place that was never meant for them.
I
didn’t have a word for it then. I do now— limerence.
This
time, I let go.
Hannah
Lee is a Georgia-based writer whose work centers on longing,
identity, and the complex nature of humanity. She has written
multiple short stories and screenplays that explore emotional realism
and personal transformation through the fragility of human
experiences and connection.
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