Hummingbird

She didn't move. She didn't talk. She didn't do anything. Just sat there. All the parents said things about psychiatric malfunctions, or something. They said Don't tease her, and Leave her alone, and If I ever catch you... But they did tease her.

She never knew it, even though they did it right in front of her face, but they did it just in case. Just in case she really could hear them saying Retard and Crazy Girl and Lump. She didn't go to school anymore, of course. She hadn't gone since the second grade, and that was eight years ago. She just sat on the porch, or on her bed, or at the table, wearing whatever her mother dressed her in that day. Whenever the neighborhood boys would walk by, they were sure to say something mean. If it wasn't about her clothes, it was her hair. Or her eyes, which they always found something wrong with.

They knew someone was inside. They didn't think of her as, say, furniture, like the porch swing she sat on when the weather was fair. She never moved on it, though the temptation to swing back and forth should be a natural and unavoidable thing, but they still knew someone was inside. Maybe they just hoped, because it gave their words a sting. Otherwise, it was just them and the whole big world they didn't understand, the world they were told every day they weren't ready for. More ready than the Lump, they could say. More ready than her. She doesn't even move.

But that's the thing. On the outside she didn't move, but inside, where no one saw, she was a hummingbird. She was flying rings around the world. Not ready for the world—she had already seen every secret the world held dear, and she was ready for more.