The Summer of Dead Birds

by Ali Liebegott

  She’s still warm, you said, touching her forehead

  how did you know to close her eyelids

  we sat with her for a while

  then went in the yard to smoke on the steps

  a few feet away on the other side of the French doors

  her body still lay in the hospital bed

  the whole time she was dying you had to sneak cigarettes

  because the smell made her sick

  all her senses heightened after chemo

  a fire truck went by and you howled like a dog

  that’s what your mom did when she heard sirens

  she howled to prompt her dogs’ howling

  XIX.

  you lit candles while Valerie stood behind

  your mother’s body and sang “Amazing Grace”

  you removed the IVs from her arms and placed them

  on the tray where her next round of medications waited

  I held her stiffening body as you rocked it side to side

  trying to free her arm from a pajama sleeve

  twice you tried to pull the catheter

  from between her legs, but it wouldn’t budge

  XX.

  I learned from you how to prepare a body

  you filled a bowl with soapy water

  dropped in perfume and rose petals

  dipped the washcloth in the rose water and moved it over her

  cleaning around the stubborn catheter last

  then you dried her gingerly with a towel

  and spread lotion over her arms and each finger

  we looked at her closet of shoes

  everyone but me knew not to leave jewelry on

  because it would be stolen at the mortuary

  when she was completely prepared

  you put your fingertips on her forehead and kissed her

  you waited hours before calling the hospice nurse

  to tell her your mother had died

  because once they sent someone for her body

  it would be taken away forever

  XXI.

  for hours we were high from your mother’s death

  I know it’s hard to imagine the word beautiful here

  but we were there and know it’s the only word

  the grace that filled you as you held her hand and told her

  to keep going, to not be afraid, to not look back

  when you finally called the hospice worker

  she said they’d send someone to come pick up

  the hospital bed and medications and walker

  we’d forgotten about the walker

  it seemed like an eternity since your mother had walked

  XXII.

  we waited for the paramedics in the driveway

  smoking and making phone calls

  retelling the story of her beautiful death

  to everyone in her phone book

  the ambulance surprised us

  it pulled up without sirens on

  two polite men slid a gurney out the back

  unsnapping each of its wheeled legs

  I was afraid of seeing your mother’s body taken away

  they gave you a moment alone to say goodbye

  and then zipped her inside a bright-blue body bag

  and pushed her on a gurney out the dim hallways of

  her own house

  XXIII.

  your mom wanted her ashes scattered in a stream

  that held water she was baptized with late in life

  the stream was on top of a mountain

  accessible only in summer, located by a handmade map

  I watched as you listened, eyebrows raised

  hovering over her bed as she whispered this request in her

  final days

  but you promised her everything, even though

  you had no idea how you’d get up that mountain

  Part Two

  Crying Season

  I.

  you took the pillow that propped her head up

  plump, like a pillow in a coloring book

  big down marshmallow with a goose-head tag

  and walked around the house

  trying to pull the scent from its depths

  at night you wrapped your arms around it and slept

  I’d never been around grief this big, it scared me

  long after her scent was gone

  you kept the pillow propped on your bed

  II.

  Few lesbian relationships survive the death of a mother,

  my therapist said

  I was so mad when she said that

  We will, we will, I thought

  III.

  after I left you I had nowhere to live

  so I moved into my tiny writing studio

  the only place for my bed was behind a window

  a few feet from a noisy bus stop

  while I lay awake waiting for daylight

  my thumb searched my ring finger in the dark

  looking for the missing silver band

  it hunted helplessly, like a dog that runs up

  to every person on the street that resembles its dead owner

  IV.

  first thing in the morning

  my dog Rorschach and I walked to the coffee shop

  when we returned, I opened the blinds and sat down

  on the bed

  the people at the bus stop ate candy and drank sodas

  letting their wrappers drift away behind them

  sometimes they watched me inside my diorama

  did I say diorama, I meant aquarium

  and I was the fish that swam in small predictable circles

  waiting for Crying Season to begin

  V.

  have you ever been lost like this, hours spent facedown

  unable to understand how you ended up

  with your heavy limbs or the tattoos that cover them

  at night, Rorschach settles her old dog body

  next to mine with no regard for my grief

  during the day, I sift dumbly through milk crates

  filled with eight years of cards and presents

  there are two pictures of us at the amusement park

  on our first date after you admitted cheating

  each of us alone on a green bench, our young faces

  smile cautiously from behind the same stuffed pig

  VI.

  and then the walking began

  I set out with Rorschach and made giant loops

  of the neighborhood from morning until night

  trying to know how to live next

  we walk past the car wash where the stalls are full at six a.m.

  who washes their car at six in the morning?

  Rorschach loves my grief

  it means she gets to walk twelve hours a day

  at night when I return to my studio and take off my shoes

  my toes have bled and scabbed to my socks

  VII.

  while Rorschach sniffs the foot of a tree

  I try to understand the therapist’s suggestion:

  Ask yourself what you need every half hour

  and see if you can give yourself that

  I need to call the dentist to fix the teeth I’ve shattered

  in my sleep

  I need to see if the flattened pigeon’s still in the gutter

  I found it the first night I moved out of our house

  and now I check on it daily like an old neighbor with

  a bad hip

  I understand how a bird could get hit by a car, but flattened

  in its blissful pecking at a cigarette butt, it never felt

  the dump truck reverse over its skull

  two days ago, the sweeper flipped the flattened pigeon

  from the gutter to the middle of the street

  the tips of its wings fluttered like newspaper edges

  each time a car ran over it

  VIII.

  this land of flatte
ned pigeons in Pompeii poses

  wings upraised and trying to flap away from their bodies

  two puffed-out pigeons seduce each other by dancing

  and pecking the ground dangerously close to their

  flattened brother

  I pray they won’t begin to eat him

  (urban pigeon myths depict such things)

  I’m begging you not to do what you’re thinking,

  I say to the young lovers

  if my therapist were here I’d say,

  I desperately need the in-love pigeons not to eat the flattened one

  IX.

  who will help me sweep up the puff of dust and plaster

  that tumbles down inside me after each depression

  every hammer swing sends pieces of drywall, scuttling

  down my chest to settle in my hollow legs

  I’ve become a walking urn of my own ashes

  it doesn’t matter, worthy or unworthy depression

  the ashes gather at the same winter rate

  X.

  Rorschach will be thirteen in a few weeks

  I want to ask every stranger in the street,

  What’s the oldest dog you ever knew?

  it’s early and bright, the street apocalyptic in its emptiness

  like a Sunday, but it’s not

  Rorschach tugs to get a good sniff of the flattened pigeon

  It’s real, I want to say

  not a photographer’s pawn

  dressed up in tatters, face streaked with soot

  no makeup man lifting up those wings

  pretending the edges of a last-minute escape

  but no one needs to tell Rorschach what’s real

  XI.

  when she was two, I got Rorschach’s name tattooed

  on my back

  I accidentally insulted the tattoo artist

  by double-checking it was spelled right

  he wanted me to know he’d been tattooing for twenty years

  I was less worried about him than the dyslexia of

  consonants in her name

  it was my second tattoo ever and when the needle dug

  into my back

  I felt a rush of electricity travel up my spine

  XII.

  do you know how a goodbye can make you curious?

  suddenly there’s a million possible streets to explore

  Rorschach leads me down a street draped in electrical wires

  I follow, lost in thought, listening to the electricity popping

  above me

  my thoughts are:

  Do goodbyes happen years before the actual goodbye?

  my thoughts are:

  Can leopards change their spots if you wait long enough for the leopard?

  XIII.

  I follow the crackling wires as far as they’ll lead me

  it’s true I thought, if the wires fall and these pops turn

  to sparks

  we could lie down and feel them on our faces like rain drops

  Rorschach was walking more directly under the wires

  she would be the one to get it if they fell

  did I mention I was trying walking meditation?

  XIV.

  the first time I meditated I saw a man

  push the point of an ice pick into my sternum

  next, in a Mexican restaurant at a friend’s Quaker wedding

  I spent the first twenty minutes staring at a vent

  wondering if a sniper was crouched in there

  and if so, should I break the silence to warn the other guests

  during the second twenty minutes, I worried I had Crohn’s

  disease

  XV.

  Rorschach tugs toward the gutter

  she wants to piss on the flattened pigeon

  after a divorce, does everyone float like a lost balloon?

  their head, a forest of rotting animals

  we walk past the tire shop and I worry

  about how I’ll cope when Rorschach’s gone

  every couple blocks I lean over and smell her head

  I used to say, When Rorschach goes, I go

  but now I’m older

  I’m older and she’s older

  XVI.

  to live with a dog is to have it become part of your body

  the first time I was separated from Rorschach

  I dropped her at a friend’s house the night before a flight

  when I returned home to pack

  the absence of her sounds was profound

  no nails clicking across the floor

  no tail thumping into a doorframe

  even though she was only a year

  I already knew which sounds would go when she was gone

  to live with a dog is to grow old with a dog

  this is how you lean over to help your blind dog down

  the steps

  this is how you lift your arthritic dog onto the bed

  this is how you greet the deaf dog after work

  look for her in every room until you find her asleep

  then stand panicked in front of her until her chest moves

  XVII.

  my life changed the day I brought Rorschach home

  three months old and tiny spotted legs

  I put a blanket on the floor a few feet from my bed

  she’d stay for a second then scuttle over to me

  with her tiny puppy legs

  each time I carried her back, I gave a half-hearted stay

  immediately she returned to me

  after five times I gave up

  in the middle of the night I woke

  to her suckling the bottom of my T-shirt

  the whole reason we were doing this dance

  was because everyone said,

  Don’t let the dog sleep in the bed with you

  you’ll never be able to discipline the dog after that

  but the whole point of having a dog

  is to let it sleep in the bed

  XVIII.

  I’d stop looking for dead things

  if there’d stop being dead things everywhere

  the last day of Crying Season it poured

  Rorschach refused to go out in the rain

  I walked through the park to the coffee shop

  a black spot in the green grass caught my eye

  a dead blackbird

  I thought about moving or burying it

  something besides leaving it unceremoniously there

  then I saw another and another

  big and small, their heads tilted to the side

  ants crawled over their feathered crowns and eyes

  the sheen of black feathers became undeniable through

  the blades of grass

  here it was, the summer of dead birds

  XIX.

  it’s impossible to not think apocalypse

  when the ground is covered in dead birds

  there were so many I wondered if I should

  take one to prove they were real

  a few blocks up I waited at a stoplight

  next to a boy on a skateboard

  I wanted to ask him to follow me

  and show him the dead birds

  but the light changed and he skated off

  it felt creepy to ask and anyway

  some kids can shrug their shoulders and say,

  Oh well, the park’s filled with dead birds

  but I was never that kind of kid

  XX.

  lately, Rorschach’s back legs give out midtrot