Yellow Bird Flying

One Last Thing

I slush across wet snow that seeps through my shoes and soaks my feet. That is my own fault, though, because my soles are worn out and I don’t do anything about it. I just keep walking. I avoid the stores and all of the aisles and aisles of stuff and the crush of people and the constant chatter on the overhead speakers and the countless mirrors that are placed everywhere saying, Here you are. This is you. My many reflections reminding me that I do really need new boots and a new scarf and that I slouch too much and my lips are dry.

And cracking. And my eyes look either too hollow or too tired or too worried and my hair is getting tangled and I should really buy some new things and pull myself together a bit. I should.

I can’t go through the doors. I can’t. I walk right on by and just keep walking.

I give my dollars to the panhandlers, instead.

Thank you for this, they say. I smile. I feel my lips split and bleed. They don’t cringe. Not even a little bit. Bless you, they say.

And that makes my heart break.  I don’t really know why. It just does. My heart breaks a lot. It breaks over and over.

They say one last thing to me, but I am already gone.

I hear nothing.

I keep walking. I pass right by the stores. I let the snow soak through my soles. I keep my old scarf. I let the wind tangle my hair even more.

Run. Run. Run.

I always think I can outrun this. This relentless downward pull. It’s like being on a leash of sorts, this depression.

Sometimes, it gives me some slack and I can breathe and I can concentrate and I can write and I leave my house and I talk to people and I laugh with them and I make them laugh and I let people actually touch me and I let them hug me and I move through the world almost like a normal person moves through the world. Almost like a normal person. Almost.

I can breathe.

I can breathe and I transcend all of the dark sludge that engulfs my heart.

I transcend it. I transcend everything.

And then. I choke. Of course I do.

Always.

This depression rips me away from everything that is good until it drags me right back down. Every time.

I can run and run and run. But I can never outrun myself.

Speechless Mouth

Someone keeps breaking into my car, but that is also my fault, because I always forget to lock my doors. Which is an unusual thing for me to do because I am a checker. I check, check, check. And then I recheck. But my car is an exception. I can never remember to check the locks. The only time I do remember to lock my car doors is when I see that someone has broken into it again.

The glove box open and empty, like a speechless mouth, its contents spread out all over the passenger seat. They take nothing, though, because there is nothing to take. The only semi-valuable thing I keep in my car is a stockpile of quarters I stash in my ashtray. But they don’t even take those.  They just rip the ashtray from its socket and throw all the coins in the gutter.

Why can’t you do simple things?  I think to myself as I pick up quarters from the street. Why can’t you lock your doors?

Pale blue twilight falling all over me as I sift through the gutter garbage for coins.

Here I am.

This is me, then. 

I find my empty ashtray in a ditch at the end of my street and put it back in my car, along with a handful of quarters.

I forget to lock my doors.

Gravity

Rain had just started falling, the first tiny droplets trickling down the window, when the bird smacked right into the glass. And even though I knew there was nothing I would be able to do for it, I went outside anyway, walked into the garden where he lay in the dark soil, half in shock and very nearly dead. He was such a small bird, a little finch; his wing gave one last weak flutter and then, nothing. I bent down and scooped him up in one hand and used the other to cover him, so I could keep him warm. It was too late, though. I held him in my hands and felt his feathers on my palms. He was completely still.

Often, I become hyperaware of gravity.

The way it pulls and pulls. Everything feels heavy. My limbs are made of lead. My head is a stone, threatening to crush my neck and smack into whatever surface is in front of me: a table, a counter, a dashboard, a shoulder. Smack. Like a bird flying straight into a window.

Gravity II

My mind does this odd thing, sometimes. It will pull me away from wherever I happen to be, making it so that I am only half present. Less than half. An I am here, but I am not here sort of thing. I will be talking with someone—listening to them tell me about their breathing problems or about how their son makes so much money in his new job or how they are going to take a cruise in the summer or how they had to disconnect their doorbell because their sister (whose bad drug addiction is getting much, much worse) was ringing it at all hours of the night—and my mind will start pulling me away.

I pull back against it. I try hard to stay where I am.

I have to really concentrate then, swim from the back of my mind and return to the front. But my brain pulls harder. Everything becomes sort of wavy; everything begins to blur around the edges and sounds fade in and out. I listen very carefully. I focus, focus, focus. But my mind always wins. Gravity won’t stop pulling. It drags me backwards. A small part of me stays present, but most of me is somewhere else; somewhere like a garden, where I stand in the rain and hold a dead bird in my hands.

Gravity III

I don’t know what I could have done for it, really. I tried to keep him warm. I held him and covered him. I felt his limp wings unfurl in my palms.

I stood in the garden with the bird and thought of all the ways this could have been avoided:

If only there wasn’t a window here. If only there were no windows at all. And no walls and no doors and no houses and no people. Just a planet of trees and stars and birds. Everything would be great, then, and the birds could fly and fly with nothing to worry about, with nothing in their way.

But. This bird. This bird got a window. This bird got the rain and a colorless sky above a garden of wilting irises and poppies and hollyhocks.

This bird got me. And my hands.

My hands with bits of soil clinging to my fingertips. With raindrops sliding over my knuckles. His feathers soft against my palms, his broken wing touching my life line and my heart line.  

I watched him closely for any signs of life. I watched his chest to see if he was breathing at all. I leaned my head down to my hands, brought him up to my ear. I listened. For anything. I listened very carefully.

I heard nothing. 

Gravity won’t stop pulling.

Gravity pulls me all the way down to the floor.

Almost There

For a string of nights, I cannot sleep at all. But when my exhaustion finally catches up to me—and it always eventually catches up to me—I pass out and sleep so deeply I may as well be dead.

In my dream, I am part of a long line of people walking through the dark. I don’t know where we are going, and my feet want to stop moving. I pause and start to pull back from the crowd.

It’s just that I’m so tired, I say to all of them as they push by me. I’m so tired and I can’t keep going.

I withdraw and fall behind. I feel everyone walking forward, everyone moving past me. Their arms brushing across my arms.  I let myself drop; I slide down to the ground and listen to all of those footsteps dying out.

Someone stops, though. Someone stops with me, kneels down and puts their hand on my back, moves it in slow circles around and across my shoulder blades, tracing figure eights; the way my mother used to do for me when I was very young.

We’re almost there, a voice tells me. It’s such a soft voice, though, I almost don’t hear it at all. I have to listen very carefully. We’re almost there.  

I wake up, but only partially. Most of me is still in my dream with a soft voice floating in my ear.

Where? I say, half-asleep. But there is no answer, only my voice in an empty room. When I fall back into my dream, all of the people are gone. There is no hand on my back, no soft voice. It’s just me, now.

Where? I ask again.

I listen.

I listen very carefully.