Yellow Breasted Lily Lover

Tandy sidelopes down the sidewalk.  She's wearing her purple negligee with black frills on the hem.  If men were fish they would dive at the most seductive of frills and would be ensnared...    She sidelopes and people get out of her way.  They move aside and say to each other, "She's Tandy."  Out of her defeats has been born a new quality.  She is the desire to love. 

With leaves falling she stops to flare her nostrils and whistle.  Above, perched in waiting, The Yellow Breasted Lilly Lover whistles back.  For birds, Spring is the time for showing off, Autumn is the time for getting fat.  The Yellow Breasted Lilly Lover stares at Tandy with glassy eyes.  Tandy cocks her head, not unlike a bird.  She bends over, picks up a rock and throws it at Lily Lover.  It gets him in his paunch and bounces back into Tandy's hands. 

"Do you have a pencil?" Asks Lily Lover.

"What for?"  Asks Tandy.

"I've got a thought and want to record it before it flies away, like a wayward harlot."

"Look at your hands, Lily Lover.  They are so ill formed and misshapen.  You couldn't even hold your pecker."

It's true, whenever Lily wants to go pee, he just goes, and it get's all over his manufactured plumage.  He has somehow managed to side step the problem by ordering his plumage as Yellow. 

Lily hangs his head.  He examines his lizardesque hands, the sight of which always make him curse his genetics. 

"Look at your hands, Tandy.  They are made of moonlight and sunshine dust." 

Tandy looks at her hands.  "Are you trying to insult me?" 

Everything Lily says seems to go awry.  "What I meant was they must be soft like oysters."

Tandy remembers the time she walked through the oyster garden and first winces then gags at the feelings it evokes.  "Crunchy, and painful, and bleeding, and slippery, and smelly?"

Lily knows he would have been better off with sticking of his plan of "catatonia in the tree," but sometimes his thoughts fly, not unlike the most wayward harlots, and everything goes frightfully awry.

"What I meant was, your hands inspire within me a burning of the loins, and I want nothing more than to tear off my plumage, and my beard, and go dancing in dewy glades." 

Tandy remembers the doctors telling her of Burning Loins, which can be prevented through abstinence or the use of prophylactics. 

"Are you sick, Lily?" 

"If by sick you mean 'Itchy Privates' then yes."  Not even Lily knew he was going to say that before it left his mouth. 

The sun for a moment shines through the clouds.  It causes Tandy to squint and shield her eyes with her hand, as though in salute.

"At ease, soldier," Lily says.  He hangs his head.

"I hope you get yourself cured, Lily.  Get well soon.  The winter looks like it will be a long and bitter one, but at least we know to expect it." 

Lily raises his deformed hand to wave.  His beak twists into a sad smile.  He watches Tandy sidelope away down the sidewalk, getting smaller and smaller as she leaves. 

Lily doesn't need to be reminded of the coming winter.  He's been preparing for it all his life.  He dug a hole under the tree he's sitting on, and covered it with sticks and straw.  When the winter breathes it's icy breath, and when Lily has been covered in a fine sprinkling of snow, and when his heart rate has slowed, his perch will become compromised, his balance will be tilted, and he'll fall back, way back, and it will be as though he was never even there.... except for that hole, of course.... and the frozen body in the hole... and other things too abstract to mention here.