12: Imagination (Short Story)

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So I ask her
why she cages the birds
but she shakes her head
and ignores me
she thinks I am a little child
but I have a mind too.

I think that adults
are stubborn
but one day
I realise
that they are just like
caged birds
too.

Their minds are closed
like the cage door
but even when
we open them
they hop from ledge to ledge
refusing to go out
birds are their imagination.

So let yours fly free.

*** 

This is based on a flash fiction I wrote for English homework. Comment and vote if you like it! (Flash fiction is like 150 word stories, so this is around 300 words, which is much too long.) :)

I would love to see the birds fly free, but only if they weren't stuck in those little cages. One day I tried to open one, but the old crow who worked there shooed me away. She thinks I'm just a silly schoolgirl.

I wish adults would take me more seriously. They think I'm just messing around, but I'm not. The birds need better lives than being stuck in there, hopping about from one ledge to another. One time I tried to talk the old crow out of it but she shook her head and crossed those podgy arms of hers. Stubborn, I thought.

I told my mummy but she just ruffled my hair. "Sometimes you have to let things be."

That didn't make sense, so I asked her again, but she kept that sweet smile of hers on. Why were adults so stubborn? I'm only six. Doesn't mean I'm stupid.

Later on that day I came up to my mummy. I realised that adults weren't so stubborn.

"Mummy," I began instead, "birds are like adults' imagination, aren't they?"

She looked at me oddly, but let me go on.

"But then all the adults lock it up with cages. The children want it to be free, just like the birds, but the adults say no and lock it all away where it's limited. Even if I opened up the little door in your head you would still hop from one ledge to another. We're supposed to be flying around in the sky, but instead, we're watching you hop about."

"Homework," my mummy sighed. "You've got a lot to learn."

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