Trills on Fifty Two

The comforter was pulled tight around my head, my back turned to the window against the barrage of sunlight infiltrating my bedroom. The morning glow lit up the clothes scattered around the room like bodies. I did not want to get up from the safety of my sadness and grief. The starless darkness of the night had illuminated my feelings, encouraging me to burrow even deeper into the hollow ache.

Trill.

The sound was coming from outside my window. There and then gone again. I did not want to hear it. I wanted to ignore anything that wasn't grief or sadness. Completely forget the world existed beyond this bed, beyond this apartment, beyond the fact that Lil G would never again sit at her kitchen table, asking me to sit and watch the hummingbirds with her.

Trill, trill.

How could there be a hummingbird on the fifty-second floor? The silent beat of wings whirred in my ear, roaring in the silence. They carried words I'd heard before, "Find your light."

Lil G was buried three days ago. All four feet seven inches of her lowered into the hole they had dug for her. She spent eighty-seven years on this earth, and now she hovers at the edges of everything, a memory, a glimpse of her silver hair catching sunlight, an echo of her voice asking if I wanted coffee. I was just stopping by to grab my sleeping bag from her storage shed, rushing off to another weekend adventure with friends who were probably already packed and waiting. She was sitting at her kitchen table with the plastic cover and fading stain, watching her tribe of hummingbirds dart between the bright red feeders.

She smiled that patient smile, the one that held forgiveness for all the times I'd rushed past important moments, and asked me to take a jacket. "You never know what the weather might do."

I kissed her papery cheek, soft as tissue paper and smelling faintly of the lavender soap she'd used for fifty years, and promised we'd have a proper visit when I returned. She would be there when I got back. She was always there, constant as the sunrise, reliable as the seasons.

She smiled that patient smile and asked me to take a jacket. "You never know what the weather might do."

I kissed her papery cheek and promised we'd visit when I returned. She would be there when I got back. She was always there.

Except she wasn't.

The first few days after a funeral are horribly quiet, with space that can't be filled. I think we should start tracking time as 'Before the Funeral-BF' and 'After the Funeral-AF'. I am alone in my cramped apartment, AF, and the silence shrouds me in darkness. Cartons of takeout and curling pizza slices litter the counter, relics of grief. The weight of just existing feels impossible when you're no longer in the world to make sense of it. Three bags of trash, four loads of laundry, my grief dragged out in garbage and soap. The box my mom left sits on the purple sling-back chair on my postage-stamp balcony. The box of hummingbird feeders is a bright, cheerful red against my grief, pulling me to them.

Trill, trill, trill.

"She loved watching them with you," Mom had said, her voice soft with its own grief. "She would want you to have them."

I'm on the 52nd floor, suspended between earth and sky in this concrete tower. Something pulls me outside into the cool evening air that wraps my oversized pajama pants around each calf like a gentle embrace. The city sprawls below me, a constellation of lights beginning to twinkle in the gathering dusk. Standing on the chair that proved to be as durable as the Home Depot salesman claimed, I strung three empty bright red feeders across the bottom of the balcony above me. They hang like paper lanterns against the setting sun, oranges and corals streaking the clouds in shades of hope I'd forgotten existed.

Trill.

What the hell? Was that actually a hummingbird? My eyes search the vast expanse of sky as my fingers fumble for my phone, fat-fingering the small keyboard with hands that shake slightly:

Google, can I have hummingbirds on the 52nd floor of my apartment building?

"Yes, you absolutely can attract hummingbirds to a balcony on the 52nd floor..."

The words on the screen seem impossible, like magic disguised as science. How can something so small, so seemingly fragile, rise this high?

Google, hummingbird food recipe, no red dye.

"Use a mixture of 1 part white granulated sugar to 4 parts boiled water, cooled."

"A watched pot never boils." I can hear G's voice saying that every time she'd make hummingbird elixir, stirring sugar with a wooden spoon worn smooth by decades of use until the cloudiness disappeared like magic. Today, I'm the one doing the stirring, waiting for the transformation to take place. The water bubbles and dances, and I remove it with her faded red pot holders, the ones she'd crocheted herself with tiny strawberries around the edges.

While it cools, I sit on the side of the couch I never use, the side facing the balcony where light streams in and reminds me that the world exists beyond these walls. My beloved tarot deck sits on the small round table, black, worn cards with holographic edges peeking out like secrets waiting to be told, calling to me with their familiar energy. But I'm afraid of what they might reflect back to me. I've always used them for guidance, described them as a window to my soul, a way to access wisdom that lives beneath the surface of conscious thought. Only now I'm afraid of what would stare back at me from that window.

I think about high school, when life felt impossible but was actually simple in ways I couldn't appreciate at the time. My biggest concern was which flannel to wear and whether to sit with the grunge kids or my small group of legacy friends, decisions that felt monumental but were really just the gentle practice rounds for the real choices that would come later. Everything seemed so hard then, but looking back, it was easy. Those hallway posters with their fighter jets and billowing clouds: "Your future is limitless." The reality is that ever since graduation, I've been struggling to figure out what that future actually looks like.

I found work in computer science after taking some community college classes, drawn more by practical necessity than passion. Good pay and the opportunity to work from home, which suits my introverted nature. Not my passion, but it pays the bills and lets me have my own space. My friend group has dwindled to a few of us who spend most of our time deep in Call of Duty battles or mining elaborate worlds on Minecraft.

Trill, trill. Find your light.

This is what G was always telling me about, wasn't it? Finding my spark, the light inside me that could illuminate not just my own path but maybe cast warmth for others, too. I'd always thought she meant going to church and finding Jesus, accepting salvation in the traditional sense. I'd done that a few times with her, sitting utterly bored in the pew, her wrinkled hand holding mine as she listened intently with her Bible open on her lap. I would count down the minutes to escape, not even hearing the pastor's words, my mind wandering to everything else I could be doing. What I wouldn't give for another Sunday morning trapped in that pew, her thumb rubbing gentle circles on the back of my hand.

The sugar water should be cool enough now. I push the chair closer to the balcony wall, the legs screeching across the rough concrete like fingernails on a chalkboard. Standing in the wind as the chair rocks on its uneven legs, I pluck the feeders down one by one. For a moment, the pull to lean forward over the edge lingers, to feel weightless and free, soaring among the clouds like the birds that somehow find their way to this impossible height. Just one step toward escape.

Trill.

I stumble backward, landing hard on my hip, holding the feeders high to prevent them from shattering against the concrete. Gulping big breaths as reality slides back into my body, weighing it down with all the reasons to stay tethered to this world. And then she appears. Hovering right in front of my face, iridescent green wings flapping so fast they're invisible, a blur of motion that somehow creates perfect stillness. Her ruby red head cocked sideways, looking at me and then the feeders with an intelligence that seems impossible for something so small. She's impossibly delicate, like spun glass given life, yet her presence fills the entire balcony with an energy. Her throat shimmers between emerald and gold as she moves, and her dark bead eyes hold mine with an intensity that makes my chest tighten.

Trill, trill.

She doesn't dart away like I expect. Instead, she hovers there, studying me with an intensity that feels almost human, as if she were trying to tell me something important, something I'm not quite understanding yet but desperately need to hear. I slowly stand, still clutching the feeders, and she follows my movement, rising with me like we're connected by invisible threads. Never breaking eye contact. Never flying away.

"How did you...?" I whisper, my voice cracking like old parchment. "How did you get up here?"

She tilts her head the other way, and suddenly I'm eight years old again, sitting at Lil G's kitchen table, licking sugar cookie crumbs from my fingers while the afternoon light painted everything golden. The memory crashes over me like a wave I've been holding back for weeks.

"Look there," Lil G had said, pointing to the feeder hanging from her eave outside the window. "See how she watches us? Hummingbirds remember faces, you know. She knows we're the ones who take care of her." I was mesmerized by the tiny creature's unwavering attention.

"Animals are sometimes God's messengers, you just gotta learn to listen with more than your ears."

The hummingbird in front of me now cocks her head again, and I see it, the same deliberate, knowing look. The way she holds my gaze without fear, as if she recognizes me from somewhere beyond this moment. I'd told her I would be back to look at the hummingbirds later, checking my phone constantly, anxious to get going. She'd kept trying to point out the hummingbirds, wanting me to just look, but I was distracted and impatient.

"I really have to go, G. I'll come back next weekend, okay? We can watch the birds then."

But there was no next weekend. The stroke took her that Tuesday night, alone in her sleep, slipping away as quietly as she'd lived. No goodbye. No final conversation. No chance to hear what she'd been trying to tell me about the birds. Just my rushed departure and a promise I never got to keep. The hummingbird hovers closer now, so close I can feel the tiny wind from her wings on my cheeks. She trills again, this time softer.

"I'm so sorry," I choke out, tears blurring my vision until she becomes a shimmering green smudge against the darkening sky. "I'm so sorry I didn't say goodbye. I should have stayed. I should have listened to what you wanted to tell me about the birds." The words pour out of me like blood from a wound that's been festering too long. "I was so stupid, so selfish. I thought we had more time. I thought there would always be another weekend, another conversation, another chance to really pay attention."

My voice breaks completely, and I sink to my knees on the concrete, the feeders forgotten beside me like abandoned offerings. Sobs rack my body as suppressed grief finally breaks free, erupting from someplace deep inside that I'd tried to keep locked away. "I should have said I loved you. I should have said thank you for everything. I should have stayed on that porch and listened to every word you wanted to say."

Her trill comes again, but this time it's different, melodic and complex, almost like a song. Like forgiveness given wings.

Trill, trill, trill.

Through my tears, I watch as she does something extraordinary. She flies in a slow, deliberate circle around my head, her movements graceful and purposeful, then hovers directly in front of my tarot deck sitting on the table behind me. She faces the cards, then turns back to me, then to the cards again, her message unmistakable even without words.

"You want me to..." I wipe my eyes with shaking hands, salt tears mixing with the evening air. "You want me to pull a card?"

Trill.

With trembling fingers, I reach for my worn deck, the cards warm and familiar in my hands like old friends. The hummingbird watches intently as I shuffle, her tiny body perfectly still in the air except for the blur of her wings, and I can feel her attention like a weight, like being seen by something that understands more than I do. The cards feel warm in my hands, alive somehow, thrumming with energy that seems to flow between me and this impossible messenger.

"What do I need to know?" I whisper to the universe, to G, to this tiny creature who has somehow found her way to me in the clouds.

I pull the top card and turn it over with hands that shake less now, steadied by something I can't name.

The Star. A woman kneels by water under a canopy of eight stars, pouring life from one vessel to another in an endless cycle of renewal. Hope after devastation. Guidance from the universe. Spiritual awakening. The card I've pulled countless times before, but never with this depth of understanding, never with this sense of recognition that feels like coming home.

Trill, trill, trill.

I feel something I'd forgotten existed: hope. Connection. The gentle presence of love that doesn't end just because someone dies, but transforms into something else, something that can travel on wings and speak in frequencies only the heart understands.

"Find your light," I say aloud, remembering Lil G's favorite phrase with new understanding. Now I finally understand what she meant. Not the harsh, judgmental light of the church sermons I'd endured, but this, this warm, gentle glow that comes from knowing you're never truly alone. That love transcends death and finds ways to reach us when we need it most. That sometimes the universe sends messengers on iridescent wings to remind you that your story isn't over yet.

I fill the feeders with the cooled sugar water, each movement deliberate and reverent, like performing a sacred ritual. The scrawling beneath the lid caught my eye, which I swear was not there before. Ephesians 5:8.

Google, read Ephesians 5:8

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” (NIV)

Trill, trill, trill.

Find your light, her words echoed through the darkness, bringing tears once again to the raw wounds. This is what she meant. Finding the light in the darkness, being the Star, renewed hope, and healing. The tears fall as Lil G's final message, her goodbye, is understood.

Trill, trill.

I hang the feeders carefully from the balcony railing, my offerings to the sky, my invitation for more magic to find its way to this impossible height. I pull up that wobbly chair and sit facing the skyline, the Star card tucked safely in my pocket, waiting to see if she'll come back, ready to listen this time with more than just my ears.

Trill, trill, trill.