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.