Marco Polo always looked at me in his own way: steady and upright in his elegant, delicate posture. I first met him at night; at the beginning, I only saw him at those hours. It bothered me to know I was waking him and disturbing him at such a late hour, for no apparent reason. I had always believed that so-called exotic animals should not live in urban homes—the wildlife trafficking scene had always seemed terrifying, inhumane, and absurd to me in every way.
I preferred to simply act as if he didn’t exist; I deliberately ignored him while visiting a house that today exists only in memories and fantasies.
“I feel like he’s looking at me,”
I said to her while we shared a more intimate moment in her kitchen. I held his gaze for a few minutes, in silence, under various effects that were ultimately hallucinatory: the greatest love in the world just beginning; the manifest curiosity of someone seeing something new for the first time; and the states leaning toward lysergia that, from deep within me, whispered: “Go to him, look at him. He’s already here, anyway.”
I opened the latch on his cage and let him out. In no time, he was already on top of the metal mesh where, to his double misfortune, he lived (at least during the most essential moments, as I would later discover).
She and I exchanged a few words, but our attention was focused on the little animal, who slowly walked toward me: head-on at first, then sideways, and thus, step by step, he climbed up my leg, clinging to my pants until he reached my knee, where he settled to simply be, to exist.
And so, little by little, I began to learn that parrots existed. And, quite peculiarly, I felt his colors seeping into me.
“Look at that little body,” she said, sucking her finger with concentration.
It was just as her words described: his round little head and strong beak; that eye that constantly changed pupil size while looking at me, showing a vivid orange when smallest, and at times disappearing completely. His little nose and the way he opened his beak for anything, so subtle and so precise at the same time.
His chest was round and puffy, while the rest of his body formed the delicate shape that adorns winged beings, graceful and naturally flirty. Not to mention his rump and little legs, which looked like they belonged to a model. The most impressive thing of all was his colors: many shades of bright green, royal blue, yellow, a bit of red, and a hint of pink. He was a feast for the senses. His tones made me feel awe in that instant, from the thrill of discovering a beauty once ignored, now full of meaning.
Something changed in me that day.
My heart turned a vivid yellow, joyful; it was as if Marco had shared part of his essence with me through his unusual beauty and silent walk, infecting me with sensations I’d never felt before.
Also, I must say something atypical happened: I began falling in love a second time in the span of two months. Though both loves were, by nature, different.
Marco Polo no longer simply looked at me all the time; he was no longer just Marco Polo—he was my little one, my puffball, the baby parrot, the prince of the house, the finest prince of Castile. We looked at each other now, both of us, steadily, each time I visited her—the one who held my love. It was as if both loves grew inside me, branching out, each one taking root in its own way, flowing into my heart, all three of us at the very core of my being. So him, so her, so the three of us: so much love, so much warmth, so much light and heat that it was no longer possible to unnest them from my spirit.
Later on, I asked her about her particular loving bond with him, who surely must have had his own peculiar episode with her.
“I stole him from a house where he used to live. I rented the first floor, and he was in a cage day and night; it hurt so much to see him always there. Besides, it was obvious he was still young, and I felt that leaving him there would condemn him to a long life of absolute captivity. I’ve always had a passion for birds, and while he wasn’t the first to live with me, he was the first parrot.”
I learned that parrots can live for several decades, that they are monogamous, have an omnivorous diet though they prefer certain fruits and seeds, and, in Marco’s case, scrambled eggs with tomato and onion—no salt.
I could tell this woman had done her research, as much as she could, to give our baby a balanced and nutritious diet. This was evident in the parrot’s plumage, always shiny, full, and if not clean, in a constant state of well-being.
Gradually I learned from both of them, getting to know one through the other and vice versa. Days, weeks, months, and finally years went by. I learned everything about him and her. I came to interpret his sounds, gestures, body language, his morning hysterical screams; I watched him yawn a thousand nights and saw how his little tongue stretched out when he opened his beak wide; they taught me how to gently pet his body, beneath his ears, under his beak, along his chest and legs.
I always wanted to smother him with kisses, but I never succumbed to such a brutal instinct.
“Hello, my looooove,” Marco would say nonstop.
“Hello, my puffball,” she would say.
“Hello, my most royal prince,” I would say.
We’d let him out of his cage as soon as the day began or when we got home from work. He always preferred my lap. Oh, heaven help her if she tried to approach me while Marco and I were together—Snap! his bite, my friend, just to remind her to respect us.
In time, the baby no longer wanted to share me: from the moment I walked through the door of that home, he demanded me with his cries and whines—whether for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or just for company (sometimes silent, sometimes full of noises and words I said to him intensely, fantasizing that he’d learn them someday).
“That parrot left me for you, you pair of motherfuckers; I introduce you and now you both prefer each other. Next time, just come visit him.”
And indeed, sometimes I visited him first. I’d arrive at her house before she did to nurture my relationship with the king and prince of all Castile and its surroundings. We spent hours together; I read many books with him on my lap: The Praise of Folly, Women, The Magic Mountain, The Name of the Rose, and others I’ve likely forgotten. It became almost a ritual: she would arrive around one in the morning, and I’d get there at eight or nine at night. I’d let him out of the cage—which I think we both always hated—and let him roam freely, knowing that sooner or later he’d come looking for me.
We’d spend hours like that: he groomed himself constantly, interrupted my reading with nibbles, walked on my legs, hopped from one to the other, and from my legs to chairs, beds, or sofas. We sought each other out, I’d scratch his head, and he’d gently nibble me. Often, I’d leave him on a little gym I bought for him while I made dinner for her and me.
For him, a feast: banana, guava, tamarillo, carrot, and sunflower seeds.
He listened to music with us and, if he saw us getting into it, he’d sing along too; his favorite was Lost on You by LP. He knew how to sleep beside someone if cuddles were required; truly, he was the prince of the house.
That’s how I came to forget how much I once despised the idea of a parrot in my beloved’s house—especially one born of wildlife trafficking.
Naturally, with time, our love settled into peace. At the time, I was a student at the University of Antioquia, and during a field trip to the Montes de María, a good friend said to me:
“Dude, have you ever listened to the lyrics of El Mochuelo?”
“The vallenato song?”
“That’s the one. Put it on—I want us to pay attention to the lyrics.”
Agile he flies, looking for the chance
to escape that protective cage,
and how lovely the fury is
of that songbird…He lost his freedom
to bring us joyFor the animal,
there is no god to bless himYour song, your lyrical tune
is as nostalgic as mine,
for I too am a mochuelo
of my dark-skinned beloved…Sing, slave, sing!
Belt out your melody
sing with confidence
like you once did
when you had freedom
in the Montes de María.
(El Mochuelo, Otto Serge, Rafael Ricardo, 1983)
(Some parts were trimmed to emphasize what matters most to the story.)
The song never sounded the same again.
That experience made me realize Marco Polo was, in the end, another mochuelo. Singing this song to the puffball, with tears in my eyes from the emotion only art can provoke and with a pang of guilt, I asked myself: what lies on the other side of love?
I realized that maybe, for him, the other side of love was a world yet to be discovered: freedom—far from that prison that limited him to just a few inches, when his biology allowed him to soar endless distances he’d never see if he always stayed with me, with her, with us. I understood that, no matter how good a life we gave him, we’d never give him what nature meant him to be—and at that rate, he would never unfold those wings I so admired for their intricate and meticulous design.
Thinking that our ethereal prince had to one day leave our lives to fully live his own gave us a kind of certainty. He had already fulfilled his role in our lives, and we, abundantly, had fulfilled ours in his. Perhaps, from our side of love, each of us—on our own timeline and in our own way—had devoted ourselves to adoring and contemplating him from too comfortable a place, without questioning whether that was truly best.
Eventually, we decided to find a space where Marco Polo could live up to his name and travel a thousand times through paths he never dreamed of, kept from him by walls, noise, and the cityscape in which he grew up.
Still, it took a few months before we found a place to rehabilitate little Marco. During that time, I had many long, silent conversations with him. I thanked him, and her, for the chance to love a species I’d never even considered—not even out of curiosity: birds—iridescent, sensual, graceful, delicate, strong, and, without a doubt, touching to the very core.
I thanked him for our time together and for imbuing me with his mystical and colorful essence. I also felt lucky to have been born in Colombia, a country brimming with fauna and flora like few others in the world.
Sadly, my love story with her ended before we could fulfill our dream of setting that little feathered devotion free, the one with a name and a growing vocabulary of our expressions. She always used to say:
“He only says sweet things: ‘Aww, fattyyy!’ ‘Aww, cutieee!’ ‘My puffballlll!’ ‘My loooove, my frieeend! Want some cocoa?’ ‘Griseeeeel, mommyyyy!’”
And it was true. I saw it myself for almost five years.
Today, despite my heartbreak over losing them both, I find solace in knowing she’s still pursuing one of our last dreams: reuniting Marco with distant cousins who, little by little, will help him rehabilitate with the support of professionals who’ll love him as much as we did—people who have the means, knowledge, and techniques to help our baby become not a mochuelo, and not even Marco Polo, but a real Amazonian parrot: a being that should never have known geographies other than mountains, endless air, countless trees, and distances unimaginable to his tiny eyes, used to smooth walls and—worse—tiny iron bars.
Who knows, maybe he too will find his own Grisel someday: a little parrot who shows him how vast the world really is, who helps him lift his wings one day and never fold them again; who showers him with kisses from her yellow beak and gently scratches the corners of his shiny green body. So he no longer sings like a slave—like he once did—but instead lets out all his sounds in full freedom, surrounded by his kind, the ones he never knew existed, but who, without knowing it, had been calling him from distant horizons.
So he can live on the other side of love—on the other side of our love.