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?
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.
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.
…Sold my coat when I hit Spokane,bought myself a hard pack of cigarettesin 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.
I missed you and extra chingo today and I wasn’t sure why. The isolation of being snowed in? Me just making my way though the grief cycle? I looked out the window and I knew why I was missing you; I was snow for you, and I would have stayed snow forever, falling and collecting around you. Molding myself to you in my own unique shape, making us one.
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.
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
California Scrub jays land so hard on the fence, and the Anna’s hummingbirds fly so loud. The Oak Titmouse is tiny but it makes a strong noise when it pecks at the fence giving itself away. The White Crowned Sparrows would be quiet-landing if it weren’t for their constant bickering with the Song Sparrows and the Black-eyed Juncos over the seeds.
I’ve come to know who is at my bird feeder even without seeing them or hearing their song. My back is to the fence while I collect the tomatoes, which never ripened, and I hear a thump knowing a Scrub jay has landed. He is so big for the feeder. He always has to figure out where to stand on it comfortably. I stop what I’m doing and I watch him position himself on the feeder. Then I see he inserts his long, pointed beak in the opening of the feeder, where seed often get stuck, and violently pushes more seed out of the container. The Scrub jay does nothing gently. They land loud, they scream, they throw seed around, they intimidate the smaller birds, they demand more seeds from me when they’ve run out. I laugh at how damn smart they are.
The Anna’s Hummingbird, I have named, Fearless, flies overhead with all the speed of a projectile, its wings making an almost-deafening sound. I don’t need to see it to know it’s there. And without thinking, I start singing, “You come on big when you’re feeling small. So what in the world’s come over you. You’ve broken the speed of the sound of loneliness.” The word loneliness triggers something in me and I am then reminded that I haven’t heard from my rodeo cowboy in days. He must have forgotten about me already, I surmise as I separate the green tomatoes I’ll use for soup. He’s always said we’ll be friends forever. Forever is so big a promise, but one I believe in this time how I’ve never believed in anything before, but in the promise of birdsong at sunrise. My thoughts are then interrupted by the hummingbird’s loud flight over me and my rodeo cowboy’s telepathic thoughts of gratitude, thanking me for giving him space right now when he most needs it, and his reassurance of the promise that we will be friends forever.
I’ve come to know who is at my feeder even without seeing them or hearing their song, and the rodeo cowboy is no exception.
It gives me some guilty pleasure to know why I bought a house on a Carr Fire lot. If you know me at all, you’ll know it had almost all to do with the Neko Case lyrics:
“Oh, lie. I thought you were golden, I thought you were wild. I caught you returning to the house you caught fire. But I was your favorite. And I said Amen.”
And a little to do with well, you know, my wildfire fascination and that secret I’ve been carrying around for years which I won’t ever say. I lived in Los Angeles then but I remember the Carr Fire well, and a text received in the middle of the night: “I leave for the Carr Fire at 0600.” And my secret worry, which followed on the days of firenadoes and my secret’s silence until one day I got all I could hope for: a text saying, “I’m alive” and a picture of a little man trying to put out a big flame.
It gave me some guilty pleasure to know the house had burned for me like no man ever had. It had burned to be rebuilt and bought by me. Now, that’s a love story. I have a pile of artifacts I have found from when the house was bulldozed. It gives me hope knowing that even bits of kitchen counters can rise from the ashes. Maybe my heart still has a chance.
Last night I walked the grounds with my headlamp while the dog chased frogs. I looked up at the somewhat starless night, I thanked the house for having burned for me.
“Oh, lie. I thought you were golden, I thought you were wild. I caught you returning to the house you caught fire. But I was your favorite. And I said Amen.”
