“The Sparrow and the Glass Sky”

In a city where birds wore suits and held office jobs, there lived a sparrow named Lark.

Every day, Lark flew to work in a massive tower made entirely of glass. Inside, owls managed ledgers, falcons ran marketing, and parrots closed deals with dazzling speeches.

Lark? He sorted mail.

He didn’t mind it—until one morning, he glanced out the 90th-floor window and saw a hawk soaring through the clouds, wings stretched wide, catching light like a blade.

The hawk landed on the edge of the building with a perfect swoop, flexed his feathers, and stepped into the executive elevator—one Lark had never been inside.

That night, Lark flew home slower than usual.
Why am I just a sparrow?
Why don’t I fly like that? Look like that? Matter like that?

He started flying differently the next day. Sharper. Straighter. Trying to mimic the hawk. He clipped a wing on a lamppost.
Then a window.
Then he stopped flying altogether, convinced he wasn’t meant for the sky.

One evening, an old pigeon—weathered and wrinkled, feathers speckled with city soot—watched him staring at the sky.

“You fly funny,” the pigeon said, grinning through a cracked beak.

“I don’t fly at all,” Lark muttered.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not a hawk.”

The pigeon cackled. “Kid, the hawk can’t even perch on a wire without wobbling. And he can’t fly through alleyways or balance on a breeze like you. You were built for a different sky.”

Lark looked up.
Not at the tower.
But at the little corners of the city no hawk could ever reach. The wires. The windowsills. The open palms of children offering crumbs.

The next morning, Lark flew again.

Not higher. Not sharper.
But freer.

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