Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather

I think the dirt remembers you once said to me with sly grin. We were here, in our favorite clearing, with our ears pressed against the sticky soil listening for worms. Your hair was knotted and tangled, your cheeks were crimson from racing over the roots and stones, and when you spoke your eyes were glassy and bright and I remember thinking you looked so beautiful and wild. If dirt remembers, can it keep a secret? You laughed and flipped onto your back without wiping away the soil but I stayed listening just a moment longer and I could have sworn I heard a third heartbeat buried beneath our bones.

I loved those days with you; running through streams, braiding grass, painting on warm stones with the juice from foraged berries. I loved climbing trees and tracking ants and yelling into the wind. I still found ways to love the days when your muddied toes were replaced with clean Nikes and I clung to those days even when the wind lost its grip on your hair from where you tugged it into a tight knot.

Those days our mothers would call us birds of a feather and I would glow with the thought that others saw me and thought of you. It got more difficult, of course, our likeness shrank in the shadow of our differences. You grew tall and lean and learned to line your eyes and color your lips. My hair stayed the color of the dirt that was permanently caked under my nails and my hips grew wide but my legs stayed short. So perhaps not birds of a feather, not with my shortened beak and muted call, but when I saw you, I thought still, we are both birds.

It wasn’t until that night in late June, you remember, when the news raved of a meteor shower. I tapped my pencil anxiously all class trying to peer out the window Ms. L sat me far away from. It had been months since we had spoken and years since we listened to the soil but I hummed with energy, and perhaps even some hope, with the knowledge that something as magical as flying stars would be happening in our sky. So I stopped tapping my pencil and scratch you a note in your locker:

Our spot for the meteor shower? xo

I worried the rest of the day you might think the note was left by someone else. I had never written xo on paper but I saw what I had seen it written on whiteboards and notebooks enough and I thought maybe, in the right light, you might think we had a matching feather after all.

Sometimes I wish I had asked you, back then, if you had ever gotten my note. But if I’m honest, I want to believe, even now, that it fell into the place where lost socks wander. I hope my awkwardly scratched hugs and kisses joined the sea of bobby pins you would rummage for at the bottom of your bag or they were swept away with our lost time. Because if I believe it was simply paper and lead that were misplaced then I don’t have to admit the true thing lost that night was you. And me. So I laid alone on the still warm dirt under the full dark sky and turned my head to the soil and hoped that it would remember even if you forgot.

That day I stopped measuring time in days, weeks, or months. It was simply, those days with you and then the days without.

And so, I gave you space and watched you stretch your wings in skies too vast and open for mine. I never could understand how you evolved so quickly and painlessly while I grew into my new life with taught skin wrapped around splintering bones. It was only glimpses I got of you then. A passing wave in the hallway, a guess who I saw today from my mother at dinner. Still, you glittered and the cold I felt making a home in the spaces between my ribs and flesh were warmed even for a moment. Glimmers I called them to myself and their warmth was enough for me to hold a space in the cold for you.

Graduation day was the first day the cold sunk its nails through my chest and didn’t let go. You were leaving, I knew. Our mothers still talked. My mother said things like she’ll do so well out West and I always thought you two would be together in college. I’d nod and mumble things like I hear California is nice and she always wanted to be somewhere warm. I did my best to return your smile when you glanced my way as you walked across the stage and in that moment, I thought California will be nice and you always belonged somewhere warm.

So, you flew West and I collected dust back home even as home changed around me in the way that seemed I never could. I tried to change, to grow. I traded in my beloved Justy for a very sensible Impreza and spent hours in a horrible store where everything was too bright and sterile and boys with cracked voices explained the difference between three identical phones all more expensive than the last while I tried to understand why a glass rectangle was more functional than the worn buttons on my Nokia. But you were gone and if I was to stay rooted then I would grow tall so I got the phone the child recommended and watched carefully as he transferred your number to the new device, just in case.

The years passed like the seasons. In one, I watched my sister become a mother and in another we cried together when she woke up with a hard belly and blood between her legs. Some passed slowly like the year my mother could no longer remember my name and some bloomed like the year I opened my pottery shop. It’s been a good life. Few adventures but many mornings spent in our woods. I felt peace and joy and grief but all the colors of the seasons were muted, if only a little, and I couldn’t help but wonder if you brought some of the light with you when you left.

Until, of course, the day when the blue violets turned cerulean and the grass a deep emerald. I don’t know if it was the urgency of the windchimes or the smell of the breeze through the open kitchen window but when I looked up from my book, I felt the soil shift beneath the bones of this old house and suddenly, like nothing and everything had changed, there was you.

It was your eyes I noticed first. Dull and dark, brimming with oil. I realized, later, that I had never seen you tired. Not truly. You were always so full of energy that life seemed to burst from your pores but that day your shoulders slumped and shadows fell from your cheeks down to your dirty Keds. You were so frail and fragile. Not fragile like a flower and not fragile like a bomb like we used to say but fragile like the autumn leaves that crunch and crumble beneath a boot. At any moment you looked like you would turn to dust. And maybe that’s why it took me a moment before I said your name and a moment more before I saw the way your fingers laid on your stomach and the bruises on your wrists. Hi was all you said.

That season was perhaps the hardest. In truth, there were nights I laid awake on the other side of the wall unsure if you would come back to me. So, we went slow. We ate your favorite meals and sat in the garden. I allowed myself a private smile the first time you slipped off your shoes to tuck your feet in the dirt. Most of all, we walked. We walked under our trees and down to our river. We walked in the crisp fall air while the last of the summer sun kissed our skin, the chill a reminder of the season to come. We walked through the mud and snow, rain and sleet. And we were walking the day you said it’s time and I can’t and it’s too much and I walked you through the doors of the hospital and held your hand while you screamed and cried until you were joined by a new cry. And I walked in the halls while you whispered to her you’re perfect and you’re safe.

That first year with her was my favorite Spring. The colors of our world seemed to burst and you, you had finally found your way back to me. To us. It was hard, so hard, of course, you know but I would say she’s perfect and she’s safe and maybe you thought I was whispering about her but I think you know I was whispering about you.

I loved those days we spent teaching her to climb our trees and watch frogs in the rain. She looked like you when you weaved flowers through her hair but she read like me, pulling books from the old boxes my mother had packed away. Crickets and caterpillars, mice and owls. It was your blood that flowed through her veins but I like to think there was a part of me she felt in her bones. I loved those days even as it broke me to watch your light drain but you would look at her and say you’re safe and we’re alright.

But now her legs are long and steady and I know it won’t be long until they bring her away from here. She’s like you, a vine outgrowing the tree she sprouted with. She’s climbed up as far as she can go and soon, she’ll begin to grow out. I hope she does. I hope she reaches and stretches without fear or remorse because no matter how far she goes, the dirt remembers her and you and us.

I once thought I was meant to wait and wither, rot and spoil, but now I know I was here growing steady and deep, a solid place for my birds to rest their wings. So, I’ll stay, steady and rooted in the ground, watching over her the way you would, until I join you in this soil.