Cold Days from the Birdhouse

Let me grow out of this. Dear God, or whoever’s playing puppeteer at the time, let me grow out of this. They say nothing in life is to be feared; only to be understood. But does pain fall within that realm? How about love? Or life itself? Or you?

Everything is so still. It’s like the motion of time, of the birds outside, of the sun above —like they all depended on your will. Take the door, for instance. You haven’t opened it in five days, and I can already feel the hinges starting to gather rust. Putting it like that —five miserable, short days— it all sounds small, petty. But they are five miserable, short days that carry the weight of forever on their backs. And that makes them eternal, and frightening.

My bottles are getting empty. Both liquor and medicine bottles, I mean. I haven’t been out in god knows how long —five days without you are enough to lose track of everything. Not to the grocery store, not to the drugstore, not even to the mailbox downstairs. People around the building must be starting to think I’m dead. Let them think so. It doesn’t sound so bad, but I’ve never been suicidal enough to pull it off. There’s too much stuff left scattered around here for me to leave this early. Not that it matters to me right now, but it’s there, and I wouldn’t forgive myself for abandoning it.

There’s my sister, and the kids I teach in the summer, and all those books unread. Let me grow out of this. Let there be a day when the gusts of wind that find their way through the cracks in the windowpane don’t have your voice, or any voice at all. Because I don’t want to hear it. Who would want to hear it? When I hear those impossible echoes ring in my skull, they all speak of
abandon and mistake;
roads not taken
and paths unseen;
every fucking thing
that could’ve been;
all those other fucking
beds
you will lie down in,
in that wrong,
disgusting future.

I’m sick of you, for real. I don’t even want you back. If you’d dare to walk in this very moment with a box of chocolates spelling ‘I love you’, I’d surely slap you across the face. But there’s no telling that to the pain. To that idiot specter inside me who screams that you should be mine forever. Why couldn’t you be mine forever? I was never bad to you. Or was I? Fuck it. I just want to find a way outside. Preferably before the meds dry out and I get a seizure.

Where is a road out of love? Where does it start? Bars, clubs, those sorts of places all think they have the answer. But it makes me nauseous just to think of walking in one. All those people are so shallow and so lost. The only road I can fathom is inside here; inside me. It has to be. Otherwise, death awaits. Let me grow out of this. Let my skin shake off your scent and recover its own hue. Let this books befriend me in solitude, and guide me through that rusty door. Again. Into the world of loss and betrayal and beauty where I met you once.

First of all, I’ll open the window. It’s not the way I thought. The sky’s not gray or ghastly in any way, and the lilies in the above apartment’s window flourish. Birds come here and there, untouched and unaffected by your absence. Nothing stops. Or if it does, it can’t stay there for long. For a moment, I wish I could fly along with those mockingbirds. Touch nothing but the air and be attached to nothing but the air. Go higher, higher, higher. An icy and perfect freedom. But I belong in a cage, strapped to the ground. My freedom will never be perfect, but I can aspire to it being fully mine. Recover those shards that you took. Rebuild them from scrap and go outdoors, where it’s fun to be.

And find love in another latitude, with a stronger spirit. Because, after all, the birdhouse you never loved is still big enough for two.