Liesl was in love with her professor, but he was a man who loved birds. An expert on red-winged blackbirds, he would crouch for hours in the marshy shoreline soil with his sound recorder and his notebook, observing subjects as they flitted about the reeds, fighting and mating.
Liesl took to wearing black to class, but this went unnoticed. Her eyes, which had always been somewhat dark and hard, began to look almost beady, like oiled bearings. She would arch her back oddly at times. Walk with uneven, quick little hops. Cock her head aside.
She married her psychiatrist instead.
Bill Winter was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and has lived there, with the exception of one startlingly unpleasant year in Los Angeles, all his life. His work has appeared in Artistry of Life, Barking Dogs, Mannequin Envy, and Word Riot. He occasionally plays a black Stratocaster guitar, loudly and badly.