I drew a bird on my hand on Thursday and it made me feel sad. Maybe it reminded me of the dead bird we found beneath the old oak tree one winter when I was wearing red boots and it was that in between time where it’s dark but not quite night yet. You were laughing at me and recreating some conversation you’d had with a stranger back at home where she said your eyebrows were lopsided. I remember smiling but knowing the amusement wasn’t real. That hurt, but I couldn’t tell you because it was frosty and there were cautious lamplights lining that winding road and we could hear the rumble of an oncoming storm. It felt beautiful and you were happy. It made me angry when you were happy and I wasn’t, I had forgotten that.
There was a damp, earthy smell that crept behind us as we walked. It had rained that day and there was a hole in my boot, so my socks were damp, I wore them anyway because you loved those shoes. Yet that trickling, soggy feeling weighed unnecessarily on my mind. I didn’t want it to, but it did. Maybe I told you, I can’t really remember, it was so long ago.
You were wrapped in my scarf, I can’t recall which one or, in fact, what we were doing there except that the taxis weren’t running, and you said it would be more poetic to walk. I loved that you found it poetic, I liked the way your cheeks were cold when I touched them, I liked the way your hair curled beneath the hat. I didn’t tell you that then. I’m sorry for that.
The sky was looking down at us with a musky, reddish hue, stars peering with glistering eyes that you pointed out to me through the splayed hands of branches. I nodded without really seeing it, even though I knew it was beautiful.
You never saw the bird. You didn’t see its cowered shell, the pinpricks of light in those beady black specks that were just reflections of the stars it wouldn’t see. I remember wondering if we all saw the world the same way. I remember wondering how many senses I could trust. I remember seeing bent and rumpled feathers that might have been flying. It was one of those horrible things you somehow can’t stop looking at, yet I resented you for not noticing I was distracted.
You were talking in the way you always did, line after line like a never-ending ripple effect of waves, elegant but forceful too. Your voice was its own kind of music back then, a track I would listen to for hours even if I didn’t understand the verse, it still made me feels things. But that day I wanted you to stop and look at it. I wished; I wish you had seen the bird. I wanted you to share that fractured picture of snapped life with me so that I could turn and tell you all the reasons I was hurting.
Pain was a bird I desired to fly like a kite, held by a string which I would then let the wind direct. I wanted that, even though we were young, flamboyant, authentic people who played guitars and were walking in a park. We were in a bright world, in slacks, in the hum of a buzzing city, wandering a path of adventure, bars, chatter and drinks for weeks, months, not ready to think about years, playing music to cover the silent sounds of our unknowing. We were fools, not ready or mature enough to consider growing old.
I thought I knew things. I knew we’d wake up the next morning in those greyish sheets and I’d lie in your arms while the radio muttered and the kettle whistled, drifting in and out of idyll conversation and gentle strokes, touches, your hand drumming on my stomach the rhythm of what we were writing, the score ever unravelling inside that restless mind that I loved. Why did I love it? It was like mine but different, we’d both stare at those markings on the wall of that sparse apartment and see different things. I saw mountains you saw faces. We used to bicker about that, I’d forgotten.
We’d have breakfast by the window without curtains where we had hung your coat for modesty in the evenings, I’d wear one of your shirts, you’d prance about with missed patches of shaving foam on your face, chewing cheerios with that boyish grin that didn’t match your height.
I knew those things. But I wasn’t happy that day and the little still, almost sleeping bird I’d seen splayed on the floor by the oak tree, no bigger than the palm of a child didn’t help. I treated it as an omen as I did in those days, I thought it meant all kinds of things. It made me dream of little shells of people, splayed, small and not quite whole in cots they weren’t big enough to fill. I couldn’t tell you that, then, when I woke shaking. We were too young and too foolish for honesty. Maybe I wanted to tell you I was afraid that I didn’t know quite where to go after this period of being reckless, fearless creatives that didn’t worry about real things. Maybe I wanted to say that I wanted to worry about real things, for a little while. That I’d like to make a nest, at some point, for our own birds. I wouldn’t want them to live with fear of falling.
Maybe I was afraid that I wasn’t a real thing, or us. I so wanted us to be something true. I wanted you to tell me what we were, where we’d go. Neither could admit that so many things, like us - like life which briefly chirps then tumbles, and crumples like a puppet– are fleeting like the night, the words we exchanged, the soft gold evening and the moments in that flat.
And to think, that I had forgotten that.
I’ve scrubbed my hands several times since Thursday so you can’t really see the drawing. There are wings and little claws that linger but it is merely a shadow of the original mindless sketch. It didn’t really look like a bird at all, now I think of it.
It’s cold here, even though the sun’s still up and hovering like a rippling pupil beyond the windowpanes, behind the rise and fall of the hills we used to climb in those early days. There are other, better things to be doing but I’m sitting and I’m thinking about what you might be thinking, whether you still write your little ditties about days that made you smile, or if I spoiled that by taking down the stars. I wonder if you still remember those red boots, it bothers me you never knew they leaked. I’ve lost track of years and most days I don’t have the time to sit and wonder about the other corners of the world. I think, it might be nice to see you, not for long, just to catch a glimpse, hold your gaze – only for a moment. Just to know that we did grow old and didn’t perish from the shock of it. But then, perhaps that would spoil the mystery of it all.
