A mockingbird is singing his head off outside my bedroom window and even though Atticus tells Scout that it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird, Atticus shoots a rabid dog, so he’s not averse to violence when necessary, and this bird might be insane—running through his hopped-up repertoire of other birds’ songs, top speed, top volume, day and night, as if the privet hedge was an all-night karaoke bar. Not that I know about those. I’m no singer. I smoked too many cigarettes as a teen, and frankly, out of the 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell says we need to master anything, I gave singing maybe twelve. My father’s antiquated field guide states this mockingbird behavior is either territorial or gleefulness in the search for a mate, which sounds like anxiety or mania to me and I, too, feel anxious, enough to rummage up a slingshot and dried peas, make shrapnel of the leaves, but because I’ve read him, studied him, watched him strut and fret across the walk, join forces with a house finch to harass the cat, perform his two-step, wing-fluff, insect-hunting dance, because I’ve learned that he calls out at night in fear or loneliness, I know him now, the way I know voices inside books—how he’s like me and not like me. How he sings as he must sing. The way I have to write. How summer will be over soon for all of us.