When I was a fledgling, I lived in the city. The machines, the people… I had to sing twice as loud for anyone to hear. I am not sure they heard me even then.

It is an improvement, the country. The air is better. The trees. I live in a tree behind Børglum Abbey. A crooked tree.

Monks are peculiar birds. Their song is melancholy. Brother Geestvaas walked off a cliff. Brother Godslee stopped eating. He withered to a child’s size. The brothers carried him outside. They threw him in the sea. Trying to revive him.

They are not like city men, always moving, too busy to wonder whether they are in their hearts content or not. They are still and sad. Like hurt birds.

Brother Heilig is a poet, of sorts. He will sit with his notebook all evening, listening to me, his pencil quivering. I give him my best songs. He writes them out. He signs his name beneath them. And he walks away.

I watch them all summer, the monks. When the nights grow cold, I fly south, with other nightingales. The journey is onerous. So many voyagers grow weary; they fall into the sea. It has happened to me, nearly. It is tempting, when one’s wings are aching, to stop moving them. If only for a moment.

The Other Country is warm—too warm. Soon I’m longing for the abbey, the cool nights, and the sad men.

If this is the life of a nightingale, I am not sure I enjoy it.

But there is always a chance…

I may not be a nightingale, after all.