My new parrot tells stories. Stories of her adventures around the world, stories of jolly singing men and raucous unseemly glee. Stories of witches and voodoo and black eyed girls with precise black arts. My parrot tells stories of broad shouldered beings with stern brows and shortly packaged might. Yes my parrot is a story teller but I’m not sure how.

My parrot could be other worldly, an eternal soul or life force or god. Having experienced eternity from creation to destruction, she may know all. She may be the Holy Ghost perched on the shoulder of existence. Or she may not be, after all, her blurts and squawks generally aren’t congruent with one holding the secrets of the world. And her current congregation is one bed ridden old man.

Maybe she is a dreamer, a wily bird who can let her mind overcome her, parse a narrative and message and recite to all who show interest. But her frame of reference is flawed, parrots must dream of crackers and seed and falling from the sky. Dream of being under the claws of the neighbours fawn demon, teeth bared and hissing.

Or she may have been a simple pet of a simple woman, who read stories for her daughter. Not simple stories though. Stories of gods and men, forever in conflict. Stories from the darkest corners of a black underworld, where tentacles devour the light. Stories of love and passion between the beautiful and the spiked jealously of the dismissed. Stories of the glory of nature and the cosmos, and sometimes crime at the racetrack.

My parrot tells stories, none to be trusted but all I will relish.