Heartbreak and Birds

Everyone has a bird story as memorable as their first heartbreak, and as such, they want to tell it to who might know about birds or heartbreaks. I happen to know about both. Truth is, no one wants to know about your heartbreak or your birds, that’s why I write this blog. For me. My heartbreak and my birds.

A lady told me how she has Eurasian Collard Doves nesting in her backyard and how mama dove has been guarding her nest day and night, rain or shine. But a couple days ago a gust of wind came and took the nest and her eggs away.

“I know they’re an invasive species and it’s nature, but I was so sad for her. She cared so much about her nest. But I know it’s nature.” The lady said.

She talked on and on about it as if she wanted me to tell her, “it’s okay, it’s nature therefore it doesn’t hurt. Mama dove didn’t care one bit. She’ll just start another nest and lay other eggs.” But I couldn’t because that would be as untrue as telling someone when their heart is broken, “It’s okay, it’s nature.”

“The mother birds very much hurt and mourn for their lost nests. And they can’t lay eggs again until next season. In this one case I was reading about, the mom stayed where the nest was for two days without moving.”

“I thought so,” she said walking away. “Well, thanks for that sad info.”

And perhaps I shouldn’t have bummed her out and lied, or gotten philosophical with her and explained birds don’t hurt the way we do. They don’t grieve the way we do. Pain and grief are closely associated with thinking. And humans do a lot of that, birds don’t. Birds just do.

So when someone came up and asked me, “what it is this bird in my backyard that sings so loud and pretty with an orange belly.”

I said, “American Robin. They have over 100 different songs.” I showed him a picture and he said, “Yes! It’s that one. Thanks.”

It’s Nature and everyday is a struggle, but birds will always sing. At least that’s what I’m trying to make sure of. Life would be unbearable without birdsong.

You can’t have Elvis

I will never understand men and their seasons. Unlike a bird, who diligently sticks to the clock of nature, men’s clock is dictated by pure selfishness. I wish I could say it was dictated purely by the need to want to fuck, damn, wouldn’t that be grand, then we’d all be on the same page, but it’s not. They have needs of every kind, and they don’t give anything in return. So when my secret lover texted last night, I didn’t ask where he’d been. Where was he when I needed him? To them, Sirens already have everything they need.

When I told him I was going to sleep, I tried, but tossed and turned in pain for a good while. I grew so frustrated, then I heard someone say, to me, “what is wrong with you? You’re sitting here suffering as if you had to! Use your medicine to heal yourself. ” I thought, “oh, yeah! Que pendeja. I can absolutely heal myself. Even the most clever witch forgets she can heal herself. So I reached over to my quartz crystal, the one my mother programmed for me so I wouldn’t get Covid, and I held on to it like a crucifix during my last breaths. I immediately fell in the deepest sleep as if I lost consciousness. For hours I was lost to the world and all that I kept seeing were the words, Grass Valley. When I eventually woke up, I was soaked in sweat and panting, but I was healed. I could feel it immediately. I thanked myself, my crystal and my mother. And I surmised that Grass Valley was were the rodeo cowboy had moved to and someone wanted me to know.

In some way my secret lover having texted had been magical and maybe had sent me in the weird trip, and had reinforced the bond we have had all our lives and will continue to have forever if I can forgo his selfishness. He said, “I’ve been listening to this guy. Everyone trips out on him. Let me know what you think.” When I saw what he sent, I thought I was hallucinating. I wrote back, “Shut the fuck up! This has been on repeat for me for days! After all these decades we still have the same taste in obscure music.”

“Roy Orbison meets Elvis.” He said.

“Yes!” I said thinking how I haven’t been able to listen to Elvis since I left the rodeo cowboy. So there and then, I made it clear:

“You had all of me, body, soul and spirit, but you can’t have Elvis!”

What stage of grief is Birdsong?

My therapist says I’m going through all the stages of grieving. Honestly, I don’t know what the stages are, I just deal with things as they come. When I start to cry without warning, I go hide, when I suddenly get angry, I do the same. When I feel haunted, too. Before spring, I felt like I was drowning, so I slept. “You no longer have someone who was very close to you,” she reminded me, “It’s okay to feel like this. I know how much you cared for him.”

To someone as sensitive to birds as I am, the river going from silence to the song of a dozen Yellow-rumped warblers from one day to the other, means something. It pulls you out of the dark hole you’ve been in even if that seems implausible.

What stage of grief is birdsong?

Is birdsong the stage, which allows you to finally, not just accept, but let go completely, and only think of him with mild regret and a parade of fuck words for how shitty a person he was to you? Because when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night in that roadside motel I found myself in, I saw my naked reflection in the mirror and caught myself by surprise. The sleeping stranger in the bed was absolutely right, I am beautiful and who could be so lucky to spend even one night with me during these mating times, with males, all their bravado and their plumage.

Riverside

If I told you the river here is my one and only love, would you believe me? Would you even think it possible?

When I met the rodeo cowboy last winter, I think my heart mistook him for the river on the first day of spring with its blooms and birdsong and the promise of a new beginning. My eyes confused him with the unshifting horizon at sea during a turbulent storm. I fell in love with him without it even being a choice, but something as natural as spring and fall migration.

From spring to spring I forewent migration and stayed by his riverside foraging, living off the crumbs he’d give me. I think he mistook me for a bird. I could only live on crumbs and seeds for so long even if the alternative was nothing. So I left though I’d promised him eternal spring, and I went back to the only true river I know.

If I told you the river here is my one and only love, would you believe me? Would you even think it possible?

Flightless Feathers

I came home to find a juvenile House Finch dead at my back door. I know it wasn’t either of my animals because they were inside all day. “It must have been one of the cats who comes around.” I told The Hurricane. “It must have killed it at my feeder and left it at the back door.”

“Maybe he’s courting Lola and brought it for her.” The Hurricane said. 

I thought it was a valid point, but my mother said, “No. I don’t think it was for Lola. What if the rodeo cowboy is shapeshifting into a cat and he left it for you.”

I said, “The last thing the rodeo cowboy is thinking about is me.”

Truth is, the rodeo cowboy is a bit of a shapeshifter. I didn’t get much sleep in Italy. I had nightmares every night. Every night, the rodeo cowboy would shapeshift into a young, mean, brown woman, who would try to kill me. I would reach for my gun, but it never worked, or it had no bullets, or it jammed. I’d wake up sweating and sad. Sometimes I just cried and remembered quoting Bob Dylan to him once: “You can make me cry if you don’t know.”

Coming home to a dead bird rattled me. I spend so many hours of my day saving them. Even one dead one hurts. After I disposed of the dead bird, I went to put my pajamas on and there was a big spider on them. Anansi. I killed it and put the pj’s on. Then I saw Lola had a partial bird feather in her mouth and I couldn’t explain it. She wasn’t the one who killed the finch. I caught her and took what was left of the feather from her. It was the Hooded Crow feather I found in the ruins of Pompeii.

I had enough flightless feathers for one night so I turned out the lights and went to bed. I have never been this haunted in my life. I have never promised so much and left so fast. And those promises weren’t lies. I truly loved and cared for the rodeo cowboy, and always will. I miss him like I haven’t missed anyone before. It is an actual physical pain only momentarily relieved when I can cry or sleep.

Cabin Built for One

I know I still love living up here alone on a mountain, because when I was on a bus riding through Italy, the farms on the Tuscan hillside fascinated me. I marveled at the space and land they had. Then I would remind myself I have as much land if not more. For a suspended second I was still that city girl with that dream of one day having a farm and a tree house. I closed my eyes and fantasized about seeing my secret lover upon my return, of him coming over and helping me build a fence. In the decade-long span of yearning for my secret lover, I never once imagined we would be able to live our dream of having land and a farm together, but things have happened as I should have known they would because the only constant in nature is change, so right before I left for Italy he said, “we’re going be together soon.”

As I rode through Italy marveling at the Eurasian Magpies, I talked myself into our fantasy becoming a reality. Had he even proposed that we end up together a few months ago, I would have said no because I loved the rodeo cowboy that much. But the rodeo cowboy didn’t love me. So I let my imagination take off and I should’ve known not to do that because when I got home, my secret lover was gone, and I can’t say I’m that heart broken about it. I’ve been alone for so long, I couldn’t imagine having anyone in my life again. All I have are my fantasies. The Hurricane says that’s my six word memoir for the day. All. I. Have. Are. My. Fantasies.

I know I still like living up here alone on a mountain because when I drove by the weird little cabin by my house, which is my favorite, I marveled at the young man who gardened in his coveralls while his Australian sheep dog watched. I wanted to pull over and help and I’ve always wanted to go inside the cabin. It is two long, narrow rooms which make you wonder where the kitchen is, or where the bedroom might be. It is definitely built for only one person to occupy it. Hundreds of steps lead to the front porch where there’s a rocking chair and sometimes the young man sits there alone on warm summer nights.

before the next fire season

…Sold my coat when I hit Spokane, bought myself a hard pack of cigarettes in the early morning rain…

…and I texted you, “I’m back from Italy.”

You never replied. When I left I asked if you were going to miss me, and you’d said, “Of course. I’ll just be waiting for you to get back.”

I found myself face down in a ditch. Booze in my hair, blood on my lips. A picture of you, holding a picture of me, in the pocket of my blue jeans ….

I took with me that one picture of you from twenty years ago when you still believed in things…you look so good, is it any wonder you’ve had so many women left and right.

I didn’t try to text again. I suppose if there’s anything I’ve learned about us in all these years–all these decades– is that we’ll always find each other, inspite myself. I used to get so mad, but I’m past all that, but I wish you would have answered because in Venice I had a dream in which kid you was so very mad at me, and I wanted to you to laugh and say, “it was just a dream, I’m not mad at you.” I wanted you to answer so bad because I wanted to tell you, without saying, that a rodeo cowboy went on and broke my city heart, and even the intricate alleyways of Venice I’d lose myself in couldn’t get me to forget the hurt. I wanted to tell you that for a second, I think I kind of knew what love was but we both know.

I ain’t about to go straight , it’s too late. Still don’t know what love is….

I wanted to tell you that I don’t know if city me can live alone on a mountain, just me and the birds, anymore. I wanted to tell you I had to ungirdle a pine on my property, which had barbed wire wrapped around the trunk so tight, it was dying. It looked so cruel, who would do such a thing. I wanted to tell you to sort out your life and come up to help me clean the land up before the next fire season.

And I know you resent my freedom, me taking off alone to the other side of the world while you’re left with a shit storm. But I also know you love me precisely, because in my own way, I’ve done it how I always said I would for better or for worse. I was never going to be a girdled tree.

The Birder in Me

This story first appeared in “Western Tanager” Volume 87 Number 4 in 2021.

We were at the Alamo River Wetlands counting birds. The other birders and I walked armed with our binoculars and scopes with no room to think about anything but the birds and the storm that was fast-approaching. As we heard different birds’ songs or spotted their plumage, we called them out and put the bird into focus in our lenses: Western Meadowlark, Sandhill Crane, Inca Dove, Abert’s Towhee, Brewer’s Sparrow.

There are so many things to remember about a bird. A species’ song variation, their different colors. Their beaks, eyes. Silhouettes. The way their wings look mid-flight at a distance, or up close. A Blue Heron and I caught each other by surprise, I froze. He took flight. And there are all those names, and those places where you saw a bird for the first time: A lifer.

So many things to remember about a bird, and so many to forget about you, elusive lover. The way you feel to the touch when you are here. Your lips on mine. The way our laughs get muffled against each other’s chests when you hold me under your wings. How we can communicate without talking. We’ve tried to stay away from each other so many times only to return, year after year, like dutiful birds, to the same spot to breed. Out of instinct more than habit.

I tried to forget you, but the birder in me couldn’t any more than I could a Mockingbird’s mating serenade in the middle of a sleepless night, or the when and where I’ve seen my rarest find: A Cinnamon Teal resting in Salton Sea before continuing on its Pacific Flyway path.

In your constant absence, the birder in me, learned to love you like I love migrating birds.

One of the other birders radioed in, “team of Snow Geese on your right.”

            I stopped, looked skyward in awe as I watched the geese pass me by, taken aback by my unconditional love for something so fleeting and uninterested in me.

But I didn’t cry this time when it came on…

A few weeks ago I got it in my head that I needed to leave the rodeo cowboy, because, really, I should have done it long ago. You can only be dicked around for so long until you say enough. So today, with all the pain in my heart and in my twat, I dropped it on him, subtly in between the good morning, babe and what’s for the day, I texted, “Darling, I don’t want to be secret anymore.”

He gave me the excuse I expected, as if he’s had to give it to a thousand women, and he let me know he has had to give it to all the other women who love him. His country ass seemed to have confused me with other women. I smiled, ‘I am not other women, and it wasn’t a question, cowboy.’

I replied “Okay” and left forever. So yeah, I met my soulmate, but my twin soul was one shady motherfucker, who never came clean with me about a thing. And as I sit at the bar thinking of all the work I’ll need to do to forgive myself for this, the one song which always makes me cry, came on:

I ain’t about to go straight

It’s too late

I found myself face-down in a ditch

Booze in my hair, blood on my lips

A picture of you, holding a picture of me in the pocket of my blue jeans

Still don’t know what love is

Still don’t know what love is