“She is brown,” I said to you, less in annoyance than wonder when she flew past us with a certain flamboyance not over but under our gate to settle down into the tree beside her mate. “But he is black,” you replied, “and the name is his.” “As it always is,” I poked. “I was your bride and took your name, yet we are not the same.” You’d have joked back but couldn’t deny it. We grew quiet when we heard the blackbirds sharing words between them. Whose song it was we would never know, not having seen them sing. But it would be wrong to say, even if we could.
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