Talespinning

THE BIRDS
Word Count: 258

I listened to what the cardinal had to say. He was insistent, chirping his little red heart out until I stopped weeding and heard him out. But what he said was just more gossip and I chased him away.

There was no way my boyfriend was cheating. He just wouldn’t have time. He leaves the house at 6:30 in the morning and works a twelve-hour day.

My sister’s the one who started the rumor and I think that’s mean. She’s in a bad marriage and thinks that every man is going to do you wrong and doesn’t like my boyfriend very much. She doesn’t like any man very much.

When the hummingbird came to me one morning and hummed the same story as the cardinal chirped I slapped him down so hard he lay there blinking up at me and I thought he was a goner. I felt terrible. I poked him with my finger, picked him up and cupped him softly in my hands. He was warm with little cold feet. He didn’t move but trembled, his heart beating against my fingers like a buzzing fly. I set him gently on a bush and within a second he zoomed off. I felt better then.

The loud-ass cawing crows, the self-righteous bobbing robins, the catbirds mewling, all of birdland a cacophony of accusation. I used to love the natural sounds of the backyard. Now I wear headphones and listen to Willie Nelson while I pick the beans or spray the tomatoes for ugly hornworms.

BLEEDING
Word Count: 328

She feels like it shows, like the half of her that was him is a wound gaping open, still bleeding where he’s been ripped from her side. She thinks she leaves fingerprints outlined in blood on things that she touches. Her clothes no longer fit her. Her shoes have walked on by themselves. He’s only been dead three months.

She wonders why they say it gets better. Things get easier, they tell her, it hurts less with time. That’s not what she finds. She feels she is falling down a hole and has lost sight of the sky. The branches held out to save her are brittle and dry.

They’ve said she is holding on too long to grief, she must let go and move on. She doesn’t understand how movies and dinners lessen pain. Why a couple hours’ focus on something not part of her own life would soften the slam of reality when the credits roll by. As dessert is laid down. As they leave with a wave and promise for morning and she enters her hollowed-out home.

She needs more time to make the transition. To accept that he’s not coming back. That the ashes she spread on the sea will not rise up and swirl back into body. That his side of the bed will never feel warm.

She went through each first time alone stepping one foot in front of the other, heel-toe, heel-toe, walking a tightrope that dug into the base of her soles. The grocery store where he’d drive the carriage. The diner where he’d pay the bill. Easily done, not beyond her ability, but still oddly wrong.

With time, yes, she doesn’t tear up as readily unless she’s caught unaware. And yes, she’s able to laugh. And she caught herself humming while working the garden and she’s eating vegetables now. But the ache of the gone of him lies just below surface. Fragile, just under the scab.

LIKE THE EAGLE WHEN HE FLIES 
Word Count: 302

It was only a hawk in the sky, sharp-eyed and claw-ready for hunting. A predator; no, that couldn’t be you, I thought. But then I do remember that you said once you would come back as an eagle.

The deer nibbled its way across the lawn, just within the shadows of the trees, an ear flicking to the wind, to the sound of anything that would present danger. It looked up and saw me. I sent waves of love through the distance between us. I reached out my hand and it ran, tail flying white against the dark woods.

Not a rabbit, not a crow, no these you wouldn’t be. Please, please, don’t come back to me as the raccoon that goes through the garbage at night, or the robin that just hops around pulling out worms from the ground and swallows them whole. I don’t think I could accept that; no, I couldn’t. I’d rather you were a wisp of breeze, a scent of musk, a dust speck of ash returned on the wind.

Then one day out in the garden, watering the zinnias, the beans and tomatoes, you catch my attention. Flying straight from the brook to the river, a large trout wriggling in your talons, wings flapping now and then, now and then, just to keep you aloft with your lunch.

That night I dreamt of you as the eagle, your new form sleek and commanding. You hovered above me, ready to pounce. I felt your claws digging in. The beautiful pain of my skin rending open, my heart cupped in your talons, my blood warm and flowing.

I awoke just as once more, you flew away from me, far and farther until you were again gone. I awoke to the pain of knowing I was alone.

GARDENS
Word Count: 348

He holds the tomato he’s just picked. He is amazed by its warmth before he realizes it has absorbed the sun. And realizes he is thinking of her breasts and how he misses the weight of them, the soft warmth of them, in his hands. He quickly puts the tomato in the bag alongside the yellow squash and single cucumber. He gave up on the string beans; it hurt his back to hunch down over them and flip through leaves to find them. He didn’t like them well enough to bother yet still he felt a crack squeak in his soul, knowing what she’d think of that.

Well next year there likely wouldn’t be a garden. Maybe he’d put in a couple of tomato plants in pots and set them in the sun out on the porch. He’d read about that somewhere, container gardening he thought they called it. When he’d suggested it she spat it out like milk gone bad. No self-respecting farmer would restrain tomatoes in a pot, she’d said. He laughed. Her and her gardens.

Just in the month that she’d been gone the weeds have overtaken the flowers in the beds around the house. He tried while she’d been in the hospital. He didn’t know the weeds from plants. Everything was blooming. He’d wondered about her choices until his neighbor pointed out the Goldenrod, the sourgrass, the Queen Anne’s Lace as it spread into the lawn. The poison ivy he found out about himself.

Why she spent so much time and effort on all this stuff, he’d never know. It seems an awful waste of time to him. He figures in the fall he’ll spread some grass seed. Easier to simply mow and buy his vegetables at the grocery; what normal people do.

He slices the one lone cucumber and wonders why it has no seeds. He steams the squash as he’s had it with dinner every night. He picks up the tomato and the knife, holds it hovering above and cannot bring himself to slice it. Barely sees it through his tears.

LEAVING
Word Count: 101

I held your hand as if that could keep you from leaving. As if that’s all it would take.

Even as I spoke the words, “he is with God,” I knew you were nowhere at all.

No bigger transition than your heart still and silent. No rise and fall of your chest while the rest of you simply looked sleeping; the visual remnants of death.

Already your last breath a memory. The last thump of your heart lost in time. And only a second between them; now two, now three, now forever.

For you it was just that easy to go.