She came every day and landed, not on, but near the book. She fluffed her feathers as bold as the words she imagined. If she just flapped hard enough, she thought, the cover would flip and her story could begin.

The exact day the store owner noticed her, she couldn’t be sure. She had no watch, no phone, no calendar. Just the angle of the sun. It glinted off the sidewalk’s tree, at the same time each morning and lit the way to the unlocking door of the bookstore. She watched him wheel his stack just under the shade. And she rested eager, now brave enough to be on the cover. One day he smiled at her. She gave her best beak, and he opened the book. Page one.

She returned each day to a new page. Pecked the words. Then nested them home. A month of words. A summer of chapters. Words shared. Stories intertwined. They belonged to each other now. A new story forming.

Of course he had known loss. Everyone does. Perhaps that was the main reason he opened the bookstore. To connect.

In those sunny months of bird and book, everyone began. And began again. We don’t need to be fixed, sometimes we just need a reason to turn the page. And sometimes we need help to do it. We’re all learning.