I have an Indian Ringneck parrot.
Her name is Gizzoe—
a name that somehow fits her chaos,
her noise,
her need.
A name I came up with,
In the car on the way to get her.
Her feathers are blue.
Not dark blue,
Not light blue,
But
A special kind of blue,
that steals from the sky at dusk,
soft but bright,
shimmering when the light catches just right—
like she carries a piece of the horizon with her
wherever she goes.
And her tail—
one feather split clean down the centre,
two colours, side by side,
Almost like she couldn’t decide what to be,
So she became both.
Creating a perfect harmony.
She talks.
And I have Tics,
My body makes sounds I don’t ask for,
movements I don’t mean—
and she listens.
She learns.
She repeats them back to me
like an echo I can’t escape,
like a mirror that doesn’t know
What it’s reflecting.
Sometimes it’s funny.
Sometimes it isn’t.
She has attachment issues—
or maybe it’s love,
just louder than most people can handle.
If I leave the room,
She screams.
Not just noise—
but sharp, slicing sound,
ear-piercing, relentless,
like something breaking over and over again
inside a tiny body.
And when I come home—
before I even step inside,
before I can breathe—
The door clicks,
And she knows.
She always knows
The screaming starts instantly,
like she’s been holding it in all day,
waiting just for me.
She has two people,
Just two people she loves,
My mum and I.
Anyone else—
any stranger, any friend,
People who have known her since we got her.
If they get too close,
she screams at them,
louder than before,
More ear piercing than before,
like she’s trying to protect something fragile,
like she’s saying
You don’t belong here.
Like her world is small, and we are all of it.
She sits on my laptop,
right in the middle of everything,
like she belongs there—
Like my time is hers.
Like my time is only hers.
If I ignore her,
She makes sure I don’t.
She walks across my keyboard,
pressing keys like she’s writing her own story,
then bites my fingers—
not always hard,
just enough to say,
I’m here. Pay attention.
She is mischief in feathers.
Under the fridge,
inside the washing machine,
in every place she isn’t allowed—
she goes where she shouldn’t,
Like rules are just suggestions
meant to be tested.
We hung a Halloween spider
at the top of the stairs—
a flimsy, fake guardian
meant to keep her from flying up there.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes she wins.
Most people find her annoying.
Too loud.
Too clingy.
Too much.
Sometimes… I do too.
But not always.
Because underneath the noise,
the biting,
the constant need—
There’s something else.
Something small and fragile
that doesn’t know how to be alone.
And no matter how loud she gets,
no matter how much she tests me,
how much she overwhelms me—
She still looks at me
like I’m her whole world.
So I stay.
Because no matter how much she screams,
or bites,
or demands more than I feel like I can give—
She will always be my baby.
My loud, messy, impossible,
beautiful baby—
My Gizzoe.