A small fledgling bluejay appeared the steps one recent morning, halfway between sky and soil, not quite ready to leave either. Its feathers were scruffy, not yet fully grown, its eyes fluttering open and closed in uncertain rhythm. It had slipped too soon into danger, where instinct and sorrow crossed paths.
The stray cat came first. She had lingered around the house since she was a frightened kitten herself—still unclaimed, still watching the door but never stepping in. Her instinct was ancient. She moved toward the fledgling. The fledgling’s parents screamed from the trees above.
Then, the door opened.
There was a moment—brief and impossible—where the soft underside of sorrow met the unfixable facts of nature. A towel was fetched. The bird was lifted. It closed its eyes. It opened them again.
A voice, quiet and human, told it: you can go.
There was no miracle. No cinematic flutter back to the branch. Just a stillness that settled like dust. The bird was carried beneath the big tree in the backyard—wide-armed and rooted deep. A hole was dug. The body returned to earth.
Above, the bluejay parents still cried.
A few words were whispered. Not out loud—grief often knows when to bow its head in silence. But later, as the wind stirred the branches, a voice did rise. It said: I’m sorry.
And meant it.
The next morning, when the stray cat returned for her daily meal, the bluejays cried again. Memory, it seems, lingers longer in feathers than in fur.
A photo was taken before the end—proof that he existed, that he was seen. Later, a painting was made: the fledgling in ink and blue, curled into stillness like sleep. A poem followed. And all of it—the image, the verses, the grief—became tribute.
Because he mattered.
Because small lives do.
Because even when the world doesn’t stop, we can.
For Blue
You were not mine to keep,
but I kept you just the same—
in the hush between heartbeats,
in the cradle of my hands.
Feathers not yet ready,
eyes not yet gone—
you blinked once,
and I told you
you could go.
The sky didn’t break.
The world didn’t stop.
But I did.
I buried you under the big tree.
I whispered to God.
And I wept
because I saw you.
And you mattered.
