I Think Of The Birds

“Rest assured; this is no reflection of my feelings towards you.”

Katherine’s words were seldom comfort in the desert. Yet, in light of the last year, I no longer minded. Or perhaps, I no longer cared. Stood naked as the day we were born, our frail frames peppered by buckshot winds. she pulled the picture of us from her heart-shaped locket and cast it into the embers at our feet. Little eruptions sparkled from the pile, and the tightness in me gave way to a deflating sensation – this, I hoped, was inner peace. For the first time, we had nothing – nothing to bargain with, survive by, no memento of our struggle. Katherine was lying to me; the portrait was no bigger than a stamp – not resource enough to so much dull the chatter in our teeth. Another one of her catharses, her small revolutions. All we shared now was our bastard flame – part mine, part hers, but, ultimately, soon to be snuffed by the elements.

Our eyes met over the fire. She was crying again. All at once, the tightness returned to my chest – she’d turned this bad habit into a custom so gradually I’d hardly noticed. Still, I was grateful; the twisting smoke offered the small mercy of disguising her lesions. Abscesses and burns detailed her portrait, and I was thankful for their presence. After the accident, she was different; new and, under the circumstances, new was good enough. She, by aesthetics or by nature, no longer resembled the girl in the locket, but then again, I don’t know if I still resembled the man next to her. I have no memory of my reflection; whether, this too, was a small mercy was up to Katherine, who herself was in no place to judge.

“I’m sorry.”

My family used to visit Yellowstone every year. I was young; my memories don’t extend much beyond the smell of brioche and coffee in the café. Yet, to my siblings and my parents, it was a haven. My father would come alive with wonder in that great chasm, ‘neath high, blue skies, basking in the extraordinary orange glow of its hot springs. The light summer air carried pollen down from the mountains, and I would reach up from my mother’s shoulders to grasp at their delicate strands. While I didn’t know it then, we were out on the ice but, still, we danced.

For weeks after our last visit, Albuquerque’s windless skies flooded with contorting, malevolent pillars of ash, blankets of burning tar spat viciously from the heavens. The Yellowstone caldera, situated shy of 900 miles north of our house, had erupted, spewing forth a hellish column of volcanic rock and dust. The plains where I had spent my youthful summers were no more; they were scattered skyward.

The situation grew so desperate so quickly as to render any feeble hopes unthinkable before we’d even had time to enjoy them. I haven’t seen them in months; I’d gone to find Katherine, badly burned, and, in that time, they’d vanished. I presumed their panic was blind – it was the only way I could hope to forgive them. We were alone. Lost together, but lost forever.

Order collapsed in the wake of the great volcano; factions formed and communes erected, but each crumbled under the unforgiving press of scarcity – the little remaining resources were callously toiled over. We were welcomed into a commune many weeks ago, but I, in my negligence, used filthy soot water when tending to the last remaining section of crops. The harvest spoiled, hopes dashed, we set out on foot to find another commune where we could find rebirth. That quest has brought us here, a merciless non-habitat which, once hot, rattles with a cold, sharp wind. This is home now, and I share it with Katherine. It’s proved testing. Sometimes, when the fights are vicious, I think to draw a line down the centre of the desert and live out what time I have left totally alone. The wiser part of me decides against it – I wait patiently for salvation; however, it shows itself.

“Are you okay?”

She must know. Katherine’s naivety used to be charming. Now it fostered, not rage, but a dull ache. A predictable weakness. Her once-puppyish optimism was shaped into blind desperation by a slow, painful recognition of reality. As she wept, I grew reptilian.

“Why aren’t you talking to me?”

What’s there to say? We’ve exhausted every line of questioning, and I’ve only come to know unsavoury things: her transgressions, her trespasses, her failures and her weaknesses. I have my share, but I have kept them to myself for her sake. If all we have left is the days ahead, I wish she’d allow me my ignorant bliss. No more questions, no more answers; the breathless quiet of the desert haunts every moment, it’s a suffocating stillness where one becomes too familiar with what they really think.

New Mexico was once blessed with vivid symphonies of bird song, a familiar orchestral swell to ring in each morning. Such music was snuffed out early. The trees that once nurtured hatchlings were pruned and razed, their song sapped from the wind. For a long while, trees served only to burn and to hang, often in reverse order. Now, it’s hard to say – I haven’t seen one, if my faculties to count still serve me, in months. Still, beneath an endless stretch of stars beaming from a howling void, stood alone in the uninhabitable, I think of the birds. I wish I listened to them more. I wish I listened more.