3:02 Two Kinds of Windpipes and the Damage They Did Before Sunset

The day she learned that they are in fact mourning doves and not morning doves was a day of explanation of aching clarity their coos had saddened her since childhood she heard them at dawn at dusk it hurt more at dawn it felt like they cried to her singled her out like they knew she could hear them really hear them like they knew she couldn’t turn away couldn’t cover her small ears with a stuffed toy or a pillow and drown out their grief she just couldn’t she hated the doves hated their terrible pretty sad sounds and how they made her sad about her day her day that hadn’t even begun she hadn’t even had her Cheerios yet now she dreaded her Cheerios now they seemed like the worst thing in the world in their tiny circular awfulness of tasteless oat dust she hated the doves they wanted her to help them but they wouldn’t even say with what all they did was coo and coo and coo and all she could do was lie there in bed feeling sad wondering what they wanted what the damned doves had lost that they couldn’t stop crying about what they had lost that now made her sad for no good reason.

It was different with the wind chimes they only did what they were designed to do they didn’t ask anything of her didn’t coo and cry and beg out her window as if she could do something about it as if she had any say in what happened to birds no the wind chimes were put there her mother put them there all along the back side of the house then the front side then all sides some were metal smooth and cold with hollow steel piping others were more exotic and had wires with flat shards of glass and ceramic or rope with bits of seashells and driftwood they would chime at night when it was most windy but that wasn’t what did it no it was on summer afternoons when the air was heavy and hot and dry and so so still that was when she’d feel them first she’d smell the invasive sweet-sticky reek of rotting fruit beneath the peach trees it would drift in her window make her nose wrinkle then she’d hear the bees out her window they were drunk in all the lavender and then the small beginnings of a sundowner would start to move through the canyon the tops of the pine trees and redwoods swaying like a choir until the chimes first there’d be the special ones they were quieter since seashells and wood don’t make much noise then the wind would hit all the rest of them the metal ones their sounds were sad and long and gentle like the mourning doves’ and by then she’d have to cover her ears.

5:24 Retrieval; You Know Well The Plasticity Of Memory

12:17 Hangnail

Pick pick pick at your thumbs. Your cuticles are raw and ready and waiting. Around your right thumbnail a tiny piece of loose skin asks you to pull at it. It stays attached for longer than you think it will, finally releases almost at the first crease of your knuckle. A small drop of blood forms at the site of separation. You suck it up with your mouth to avoid getting it on your clothes. That would leave a stain as evidence. It tastes like pennies and that white lily lotion your mother got you for your last birthday.

She slept with one of his dress shirts each night after. It was trite, she knew. But his smell. His smell lingered. When it started smelling too much like her and less like him, she’d grab another to replace it, dipping one arm into his dark side of the walk-in closet as if she were afraid of falling in.

When she’d cycled through all of them, she donated every piece of clothing he’d owned. Suits, slacks, t-shirts and dress shirts, swim trunks and pajamas. His scrubs, too, as well as his extensive tie collection. You first felt rage when she didn’t spare the singing tie with all the tiny Santa Clauses on it. Your hands – still those of a child but large, like his – would reach up to his chest and search for the magic button that would make that tinny Christmas song play out of nowhere. Pick pick pick. Tear. Chew. It’s the best time of the year.

Someone Else’s Father taught you to ride a bike. There were lots of other moms and dads and kids watching. Even if they didn’t know, they knew. You were too old, too big to just be learning. Your tall-for-your-age self looked clumsy on two wheels, but perhaps not as odd as you did on three. Your thumbs are bleeding, sweetheart. When you fell, your right leg mashed up under the back wheel, and both knees skinned, Someone Else’s Father didn’t rush to you quite as fast as he might have to one of his own.

How many layers of skin will you destroy before all that’s left is bloody tissue, becoming a real-life drawing of ligaments and veins like in your tenth grade biology textbook. The week you’d studied the parts of the hand (carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges – 27 bones total) you’d felt uncomfortable looking at the bare skeletons of fingers, but still you’d looked longer than anyone else. That’s what your thumbs will look like if you keep up this picking. Sarina Milosevich, a pretty girl in grade school, was the first to inform you (perhaps incorrectly) that you had exactly 9 layers before it would all stop growing back and you’d be stuck with bloody thumbs for life. Her mother had left an especially soft stuffed bear with a red bow round its neck on your doorstop the day after he died, but you still hated Sarina for her thick ponytail and smooth, unscarred fingertips.

Now, your pillow falls in that same small space between the bed and the wall each night. You’ve tried pushing the bed closer, but the mattress is smaller than the frame, and it will always shift out and away from the wall, making that same pillow-hungry gap. You wake up to flatness. Your neck hurts. Your speech feels oddly stilted. For how could you explain the devastatingly reliable unreliability of cotton and goose down and the small spaces that eat them.

All these birds singing at night, and you can’t sleep. So strange to think you would have given anything to hear a bird (just one) all winter, and now here they are in a legion of discordant pipes and trills. They sound almost maniacal. Perhaps it is the lightning that drives them mad. They say it’s best to leave hangnails alone. You wonder if Stravinsky picked at his big Russian thumbs as he composed “The Rite of Spring.” Would you be comforted if he did.